The pause was the lesson. False Identities, the Nervous System and Coming Back Rooted
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[00:00:00] Hey y'all, and welcome back to Rooted Resilience Podcast. I'm your host, Wendy Golden. If you've been wondering where I've been the last few weeks, you're absolutely not imagining it. I've been quieter than usual, and today I want to talk about why not with excuses, not with a dramatic everything fell apart story, but with actual honesty.
Sometimes the absolute most responsible thing you can do, especially when you're building something that's less than a year old, is pause, reassess, and listen. And that pause. It taught me more than hustle ever could. And I've always said I'm a hustler. I'm still a hustler, but I'm gonna do it a little different moving forward.
Here's the [00:01:00] truth. Nobody really talks about, and if anybody's gonna talk about the things that nobody talks about, it's going to be me. When a business is under a year old, you're learning everything in real time. You're learning systems, you're learning boundaries, roles, capacity, sustainability.
And if you don't stop to evaluate, you end up building something that looks really successful, but quietly burns you out before it really ever got going. I didn't disappear because I quit. I stepped back because I was paying attention. Because I started noticing something deeper than strategy issues. I noticed identity [00:02:00] issues.
So we're gonna talk about the learning curve that nobody warns you about
early stage business and honestly early stage, anything. Has a way of exposing what's actually holding you together. For many of us, it's not systems, it's not marketing, it's not discipline. It is identity who you believe you are, what you believe makes you valuable, and what you believe will fall apart if you stop.
And that's where false identity sneaks in. So what are false identities? What really? What are they? False identities aren't always loud or obvious. They're subtle. [00:03:00] They sound responsible. They even sound spiritual sometimes things like, I'm the strong one. I'm the fixer. People need me. If I slow down, everything will collapse.
God has given me this and he expects me to keep pushing. But here's the problem. False identities don't just affect your mindset. They affect your nervous system. Wait, how do they affect your nervous system? Let's get practical for a second. When you live from a false identity, your nervous system never gets the message that it's safe because safety is tied to performance.
So your body stays in what [00:04:00] I've talked about before. Remember these four, fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. And if you're just joining and you're just hearing these, let me explain. Fight, overworking, irritability, flight avoidance, anxiety, freeze shut down, procrastination or fun people pleasing overgiving. You may love God.
You may be passionate about your work, but your body is operating like survival is on the line. That is not peace. That is pressure, and pressure eventually shows up as exhaustion, high cortisol, sleep issues, resentment, numbness, [00:05:00] or constant urgency. Your nervous system can't tell. The difference between I'm trying to, IM to prove my worth and I'm actually in danger.
Crazy, isn't it? But that's how it responds. It just responds, doesn't differentiate. And here is what grounded me again.
Jesus never hustled for identity. He moved from identity before miracles, before ministry, before public approval, he was rooted. False identities say, do more to be worthy. God says, you're already mine now. Move. From that place, [00:06:00] when identity comes first, the nervous system can exhale because worth is no longer on the line.
This is where it gets real false identity show up When you say yes when your body is screaming. No, we can all relate to that. And it's because, and I say this, especially in the South we want to be helpers. We want to be hospitable, we want to be supportive, be kind, and do all the things. And we feel bad.
We feel guilty. If we tell somebody no or say no, we can't do that. So we say yes. [00:07:00] Even when everything is saying no.
False identities show up when you confuse urgency with obedience.
You feel guilty for resting y'all? So my mama listens to my podcast and she's probably gonna be like, Wendy, I can't believe you told that, but this is the God's honest truth. It really is the truth. So growing up. My dad. He wanted to know what was wrong with you if you had the nap? If you felt tired and you felt like you needed to take a nap, he wanted to know what was wrong with you because he would always say you can sleep when you're dead.
And I remember, and this is no lie, so when I, we, my brother and I would [00:08:00] get home from school, our dad would come home shortly thereafter. And we would get home, I don't know, we probably got a snack or something, but we would get on the couch or somewhere, we'd turn the TV on, find us something to watch, be laying around and we'd hear him come up that driveway and we would pop up so fast, turn the TV off and he'd hit that door.
Y'all done your homework. What you doing? Laying around. Come help me do this. Come help me do that. Come help me. And it was just, then you gotta get busy. So when I got older, I wouldn't rest. I just would go. You go to bed at nighttime. You don't go to bed during the day.
You don't rest during the day. You don't sleep for sure. And so anytime I would feel like I needed a nap, I would fight it and fight it. And then I [00:09:00] would tell people, I think I need to go lay down. I feel like I need a nap. Is it okay if I need a nap? Like I needed somebody to tell me that it was okay for me to go and rest.
And I'm 47 years old and I still don't always feel okay. Going and laying down. Like for example, on Sunday I was so tired. I just wanted to lay down. I, recharge my batteries. That's what I call it. I don't call it taking a nap. I call it recharging my batteries, and I just really wanted to go recharge my batteries, but the fact that I'm a mama.
I kept thinking to myself, you don't need to go take a nap because you could be doing something with your children. You need to be doing something with your children. Don't go take a nap. But I did anyway, and it was the best thing that I did for myself. I woke up. I felt so good. We got so much done. I spent so much time with them when I got up from that nap, but [00:10:00] it wasn't just my daddy.
Who instilled the whole, you gotta hustle, you gotta go. It really is my brain saying, you don't you rest at nighttime, nighttime's. When you go to bed, that's when you rest. But the truth is, resting is not lazy and resting is actually healthy. It is scientifically proven. That resting, whether you take a nap, just simply close your eyes.
Whatever is very healthy for your body, it's very calming for your nervous system, helps you wind down all the things, gives you clarity, perspective. So nap. If you want a nap, rest if you wanna rest and don't feel guilty about it and don't let anybody else make you feel guilty about it either. False identities show up when you equate [00:11:00] consistency with never slowing down, and I also have that toxic trait.
I don't ever slow down until I crash, and then I'm mad about it. You think boundaries are selfish? No. No. I learned about boundaries, the importance of 'em through my husband, honestly. And when I I just, I say no, I don't feel guilty for saying no, I'm not gonna over commit because I will make,
I will be resentful. If I don't say no, so I am not going to say yes to something that I know I don't really want to do, and I'm even going to tell you why I'm saying no. Like I'm not just gonna be like no, I'm gonna explain because Lord knows I'm gonna explainer because [00:12:00] I really don't want to hurt people's feelings.
But that I've gotta set my boundaries. If I can't do something, I just cannot do it, and I'm not going to do it, and I'm not gonna force myself to do it. I'm also setting boundaries and have been for the past over eight years within my own family, and that came from my husband following his lead. Saying that certain people, certain things were toxic and just not warranted in our lives around our kids, that kind of thing.
And. Just being able to distance ourselves from certain things has just been amazing. It strengthened our marriage. It we're, our kids are healthy and happy, and it was because we just had to set some boundaries and it didn't matter how many times I felt sad [00:13:00] about it and guilty about it, and I'd let those people back in.
It always ended and hurt. And when you have children and then your children are hurt, you just gotta say no times. That means walking away, whether they're friends that have been in your life forever, whether they're family, it doesn't matter. Just sometimes you have to just walk away and you gotta be done.
It doesn't mean that you don't love them. It doesn't mean that you wish eel will on them. It doesn't mean any of that. It just means that, hey. I gotta keep you at a safe distance because it's not healthy for me. It's not healthy for my kids. I have forgiven everybody who has done anything that has hurt me or that, or my children, but just because I forgave 'em doesn't mean we're gonna be breaking bread and they're gonna be sitting at my table to eat dinner.
That's a boundary. Everybody needs to learn boundaries, and if you need help [00:14:00] learning boundaries come to me because I even made a course on setting boundaries and not people pleasing. All right? Boundaries are stewardship. Rest is regulation. Pauses are not disobedience. They're discernment. God doesn't need you dysregulated to do his work.
During the last few weeks, I asked different questions, not how do I grow faster, but rather, what is sustainable, what's aligned, what version of me is running this business? And I realized I don't want to build from a nervous system that's constantly bracing for impact. I wanna build from regulation, from clarity and from truth.
And I've also [00:15:00] had to look at my own self and say, experience taught me that I don't really have that many people that I can trust to delegate things out to. Because in the past I was always let down when I did those things. And so rather than realizing that was that particular person, I equate that to anybody and everybody that I come into contact with. So stepping back and saying, I'm gonna delegate this, I'm gonna delegate. That has been very healthy for me, even though I'm not gonna lie, it makes me very nervous. It is. It is a, I have always handled everything.
I have always been the [00:16:00] fixer. The get it all together, manage or that kind of person, but I truly have got to let go and let other people prove to their own selves, not just me, but to themselves, that they can do the things that they don't know that they can, that they don't think they can do.
And so by, by stepping back, thinking about things, really looking at things I feel like I'm on the right track, and I've been able to do that. So I've been delegating things and it feels good. It feels really good because the person's person I'm delegating to is not the person. Who didn't do before.
That was a completely different person. But I was associating that one experience of when everything fell apart. When I [00:17:00] said, you do. And it ended up me having to do it all anyway to the person that I was currently working with. That's not fair to them, and it's not fair to me either.
And it feels good to trust. Hey, they've got it. Step back.
So here's what I want you to know. I'm not coming back louder. I am coming back clear, more grounded, more aligned, more rooted in who I actually am, not who I think I need to be, and the work ahead. It's so much better because of the pause. I am so excited about all the things that we have coming up.
Like honestly, I have so I'm so excited. The [00:18:00] vision that I started out with for Willow and Oak is truly coming full circle. And I can't wait to share it all. We have a medical practitioner that's gonna be coming up that's joined our team, but I cannot wait to introduce and I will be doing that this week.
We have my partner who's also a certified personal trainer, he's working on her nutritionist. Schooling right now, and we're just really excited. We have a membership that's coming up. We have a March challenge where you will get to work with us, one flat fee. You get to work with all of us through that membership, and I am just, not membership.
Challenge and then the membership, that's a membership. We'll have monthly themes for that, but I'm really excited about that too, and can't wait to talk more about that. You can [00:19:00] also look and join the wait list on our website. But we've also been making changes there too. New website, completely new website.
Similar to the one that we have now but different. I think it's gonna be a lot better. We needed to make some changes there. Like I said, you're learning in real time. And then I am finally getting back to what it is that I love the most, which is the mindset and mental health piece. So I'm super excited about that as well.
And so I just want you to know out of all the things that I've said, oh, wait. Y'all know I'm impulsive with my thoughts, so I need to say this too. I'm also going to be doing a subscription to the podcast, so for. Less than $10. Less than $10. I think it's gonna be around $7 [00:20:00] a month. You can subscribe to this podcast through our new website, which will be up soon.
But you can subscribe to this podcast for LE for around $7. Get additional content that's exclusive just to those who pay for to be in the who subscribe and. I will be giving you different,
many challenges throughout the month that you can try and do, and, i'm super excited about that as well, so stay tuned for that too. But really, let me get back to this 'cause I'll, I will drift off to another direction all the time. The bottom line is if you've been feeling off lately, if you've been tired, disconnected, questioning yourself.
It is not failure. Maybe it's refinement like it was [00:21:00] for me. Maybe your nervous system is asking for truth, not effort. So I want you to ask yourself this week, who am I without this role? What am I afraid will fall apart if I rest? What identity am I carrying that God never asked me to hold? Because you're not behind, you're becoming.
Thank you for being here. Thank you for your grace during the quiet. As always, stay wild, stay well, and stay rooted. I'll see you next time.
