This is the episode I was most nervous to record. Not because the content is complicated, but because it goes all the way in, and I mean all the way in, into the specific grief that belongs to each archetype, the exact feeling that your pattern was built to protect you from, and what it actually looks and feels like to grieve it so you can finally let it go. If you’ve listened to Parts 1 and 2 of this series and you understand why awareness hasn’t been enough and why grief is the missing step, this is the episode where it stops being a concept and becomes something you can feel in your body. Because the Machine’s grief is different from the Prover’s grief, and the Polisher’s grief is different from the Giver’s grief, and until you know what yours actually looks like, you’re grieving in the dark. This episode turns the light on.
This is Part 3 of the three-part series What Knowing Can’t Fix. If you haven’t listened to Parts 1 and 2 yet, go back and start there. Part 1 named why awareness alone doesn’t produce identity change. Part 2 named the step that sits between seeing your pattern and actually outgrowing it. This episode is where it all lands. It’s the most personal thing I’ve recorded in this series, and I want to be honest with you: you may want to listen to this one alone, because it might bring things to the surface that deserve some room.
What Is Your Pattern Actually Protecting You From?
Before I go into each archetype, there’s something that applies to all four. Every one of these patterns started as a child’s solution to a very specific feeling, a feeling that was too big or too unmet to experience at the same time as feeling safe, loved, and like you belonged. So you built a strategy to make sure you never had to feel that way again. And it worked so well, and got so consistently rewarded by everyone around you, that it stopped being a strategy and became your identity.
The grief I name in this episode isn’t about what happened to you. It’s about what and who you had to become in order to survive what happened, and what maintaining these patterns has cost you for 20, 30, 40 years. This is where the series comes full circle.
If you haven’t taken the Success Paradox Quiz yet, do it before you listen. What I’m about to share is going to land in your body rather than your head when you know which archetype is yours.
What We Talk About in This Episode
- What the Machine has been avoiding: Every ball you carry, every system you manage, every fire you put out before anyone else smells the smoke, exists so that you never have to feel one specific thing: helplessness. The grief of the Machine is in recognizing that you’ve spent decades building a persona of capability and reliability that has quietly taught everyone around you to stop asking how you’re doing, because you’ve led them to believe you’re always fine. And fine has never been a feeling.
- The exhaustion that rest never fixes: For the Machine, the tiredness isn’t physical, it’s the exhaustion of carrying things that were never yours to carry. No vacation touches it because the tiredness comes from decades of motion as a substitute for safety, and your body has never been given permission to stop. I walk through what it actually feels like when the jaw unclenches and the shoulders drop, and why even that relief is laced with grief.
- What the Prover has been chasing: If you’re a Prover, almost everything you’ve achieved exists to make sure you never have to feel not good enough and not worthy. And the unbearable part of that pattern is that the feeling you’re chasing was never on the other side of achievement. It was never going to arrive that way, because you were never going to let it. The Prover’s grief is sitting with the full weight of how many wins you moved past without letting them land, and how lonely it is to be surrounded by people who admire what you’ve built while feeling like none of them actually know you.
- The loneliness inside the pattern nobody talks about:Provers are rarely alone, and yet the feeling of being truly known is one of the rarest experiences they have, because letting people see the parts that doubt, the parts that don’t have it figured out, has always felt like too much of a risk. I share what this has looked like in my own life, including being nominated for awards I didn’t pursue because I wasn’t ready for anyone to see behind the scenes.
- What the Polisher has been delaying: If you’re a Polisher, you’ve been running a race with no finish line, towards a feeling of readiness that was always just out of reach, judged by a scorecard that never existed. The grief of the Polisher is letting yourself feel the weight of how much of your life you have postponed waiting for things to be right, the conversations rehearsed instead of had, the projects that never launched, the opportunities that passed because you weren’t ready, and recognizing that you were never going to allow yourself to be ready.
- The judgment you’ve been managing: Underneath every revision and every not yet is a fear of being exposed, not as a fraud, but as someone who isn’t as together as they appear. I walk through how the Polisher’s relentless refining has really been about managing other people’s interpretations, and how the harshest critic was never in the room with them. It was always inside them.
- What the Giver has been avoiding: If you’re a Giver, the feeling underneath your pattern isn’t really a feeling, it’s a reckoning: that if you stop giving, stop anticipating other people’s needs, stop being the one who holds it all together, you’ll have to face how little you valued yourself compared to everyone around you. The grief of the Giver is for how long you’ve been saying yes when you desperately wanted to say no, for the resentment you’ve carried and the guilt that followed it, and for the parts of yourself you left behind quietly, one yes at a time, until you woke up and couldn’t remember who you were outside of what you do for people.
- My own grief through all four archetypes: I don’t just describe these patterns from a distance. I share what the grieving process actually looked like for me inside each one, the version of me that believed generosity was love but was really looking to feel important and needed, the Prover who walked off competition stages after placing in the top three and still found ways to not be good enough, the Polisher who used a perfect exterior to repel people so they couldn’t see the insecurity underneath. This episode is as personal as anything I’ve recorded.
- What congruence actually looks like on the other side: For each archetype, I walk through what it looks and feels like when the pattern is no longer running the show. Not a smaller, less driven, less caring version of you. The same strengths, running from a completely different place. Choice instead of compulsion. Desire instead of fear. Personal responsibility instead of a child’s contract that has been running unconsciously for decades.
- Why grief is a doorway, not a destination: The goal of this episode isn’t to leave you sitting in the weight of what your patterns have cost you. It’s to show you that what’s on the other side of the grief is not less of you. It’s you, finally running on your own terms.
This Episode Is for You If You’ve Ever:
- Accomplished something genuinely impressive and felt absolutely nothing when you got there
- Lain awake at night not planning the future but replaying the day that already ended, wondering if you handled it right
- Felt resentment toward the people you love most and then felt guilty for feeling resentful
- Sat in a room full of people who admire what you’ve built and felt like none of them actually know you
- Said yes to something you desperately didn’t want to do and then quietly disappeared a little more in the process
- Kept something perfect and unfinished rather than releasing it imperfect and done
- Noticed your shoulders drop when you finally stopped and felt something that wasn’t quite relief
- Wondered who you actually are outside of everything you do for other people
- Built a life that looks exactly like success and still felt like you were waiting to finally feel it
Why the Pattern You’ve Been Running Deserves to Be Grieved, Not Just Understood
There is a version of this work that stays entirely in the head, where you understand your pattern, can trace it back to its origin, name the feeling it was built around, and file it neatly away as something you now know about yourself. And nothing moves. Because knowing isn’t the same as feeling, and feeling is the only thing that actually reorganizes who you believe yourself to be.
The patterns you’ve been running were built by a child who needed to feel safe, loved, and like they belonged, and who found a strategy that worked. That child was loyal, intelligent, and doing the absolute best they knew how to do. And that child’s contract has been running your adult life ever since, without you ever checking in to update it.
Grief is the update. Not a project, not a framework, not something you can think your way through. It’s the emotional reckoning that happens when you finally let the weight of what these patterns have cost you land in your body instead of staying in your head, and then choose, from the other side of that, who you want to become now.
That’s what this series has been building toward. And if it’s stirred something in you across these three episodes, that’s not a coincidence.
Ready to Stop Running the Pattern and Start Building Something Different?
If you’ve listened to all three episodes and something in you knows it’s time to actually do this work rather than understand it, the Congruency Audit is where we begin.
In your free 15-minute Congruency Audit, we identify which pattern has been running your life, what it’s been protecting you from feeling, and what it’s actually going to take to step into the version of yourself that isn’t driven by that child’s contract anymore. Not more awareness. The real work, at the level where the pattern actually lives.
This isn’t about optimizing the version of yourself you built to survive. It’s about creating congruence so the life you’ve built doesn’t just look good. It finally feels right.
Book your free Congruency Audit: lisacarpenter.ca/audit
And if you haven’t yet taken the Success Paradox Quiz, that’s your starting point.
Take the Success Paradox Quiz: lisacarpenter.ca/quiz
Listen to Part 1 and Part 2 of the ‘What Knowing Can’t Fix’ series.
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:06:29 - 00:00:33:12
Lisa
You built success that looks damn good on the outside, but inside it's costing you your health, your relationships, your energy. And no matter how much you do, it never feels like enough. Welcome to Congruent. I'm Lisa Carpenter, the coach. High performers call when they can afford to burn it all down, but they can't keep living like this either.
00:00:33:14 - 00:00:58:24
Lisa
Here we rip off the mask of success and expose what's real. The patterns that you keep running, the price that you've paid, and how to build success that fuels you instead of empties you. Real success is agency. It's powerful self leadership to run your life instead of being run by it. To let your drive and your well-being finally work together.
00:00:58:27 - 00:01:09:08
Lisa
Because the real win is success. That actually feels good.
00:01:09:10 - 00:01:38:02
Lisa
Hey, hey, and welcome back to the Congruent Podcast. This is what your achievement pattern is protecting you from feeling. And this is the third part of this three part series about what knowing can't fix. So this is the episode that I have probably been the most nervous to root to record, if I'm being honest. In episode one, I talked about why awareness doesn't produce identity change.
00:01:38:05 - 00:02:02:27
Lisa
And in episode two, I named the step that was that. Most of you are skipping acceptance and the grief that we have to navigate to get to acceptance. I talked about the the stages of grief. I talked about a metaphor around a ring of fire and why it's not a doing solution. It's a feeling solution. And today I'm going to go all the way in.
00:02:02:29 - 00:02:29:01
Lisa
I'm going to name what each archetypes grief actually looks like, the specific feeling that your coping patterns were built to protect you from the things you've been avoiding your entire life. And you're going to hear emotion in my voice as I experience my own grief for these parts of myself. Because I am still a work in progress, and I am very upfront and honest about that.
00:02:29:01 - 00:02:50:00
Lisa
I think that it's a big part of coaching as being in integrity with our work. So even though I have gone through the grieving process over these parts of myself, I can't help but get emotional when I look back on that much younger part of myself who didn't know she needed to be anything other than who I was.
00:02:50:02 - 00:03:20:10
Lisa
I came into this world as more than enough as did you. So if you took the Success Paradox quiz before the series, you know your archetype. And if you haven't, make sure you head over to Lisa Carpenter, aka Forward Slash Quiz. Get your archetype. And in fact, start at, episode one of this three part series. Because what I'm about to say today is going to land more in your body and less in your head, and that's what it's about.
00:03:20:12 - 00:03:43:19
Lisa
So I want you to stay out of this intellectual realm. And we're going to drop into feeling today. So I'm going to give you a heads up that this episode is probably one you're going to want to, you know, sit yourself down, maybe by yourself and give yourself some space to listen because it may bring things to the surface.
00:03:43:21 - 00:04:07:25
Lisa
This may be the episode that really starts to crack you open. Not because it's dramatic, but because I'm going to be really honest and you might need some room to be with what I'm about to share today. So before I walk you through what each archetype, what grief looks like for each archetype, I want to say something that applies to all four.
00:04:07:28 - 00:04:40:20
Lisa
So every one of these patterns started as a child solution to a very specific feeling, a feeling that was too big or too threatening, or a feeling that was to unmet okay, to experience safety at the same time. So you built a strategy to make sure you never had to feel that way again. And these strategies work so well that they become part of our identities.
00:04:40:22 - 00:05:16:13
Lisa
So the grief that I'm about to name is not about what happened to you, it's about what and who you had to become in order to survive the things that happened or the things that you didn't receive. And it's about what maintaining these patterns has cost you for 20, 30, 40 years. So all of these patterns, all of these coping patterns were built around three things the need to feel safe, the need to feel loved, and the need to feel like you belonged.
00:05:16:15 - 00:05:42:28
Lisa
Each archetype is a different answer to the same question. How do I make sure these things are not, a threat to losing? Okay, so how do I make sure I don't lose these things? So before I go into each one, I want you to know that most people aren't just one archetype, which you may have discovered. If you already took the quiz, you'll probably recognize yourself in more than one of these.
00:05:42:28 - 00:06:08:15
Lisa
And that is totally normal. My personal story runs through all four, but one of them will pull you harder than the others, and that's the one you want to pay attention to. So right now, and probably for most of my life, the prover was one of my deepest patterns. But I'm also a recovering giver, and I'm also a recovering machine.
00:06:08:17 - 00:06:37:06
Lisa
And, you know, I really you know, in the last episode, I shared that I walked into my therapist's office, hadn't having been taken to my knees after trying to, you know, fix it with my thoughts by reading all these books. And it was all these archetypes that I discovered about myself that was really like, took my took my breath away because they made up this identity that I believe to be true about myself.
00:06:37:06 - 00:07:12:16
Lisa
And now to see them as like, wow, what if these aren't true? I just, I just saw myself as totally flawed and totally broken. So I'm going to invite you into my experience of grief, of each of these archetypes and the things that I've had to work through. So we're going to start with the machine. So if you came out of the machine, everything you do, every ball you carry, every system you manage, every fire you put out before anyone else even smells, the smoke exists so that you never had to feel one thing.
00:07:12:18 - 00:07:34:03
Lisa
And that thing is and it's it's a thing that all humans want to avoid is a feeling of helplessness. That if you stop, if you loosen your grip, or if you let something fall, you'll have to feel how little control you have. And helplessness has never been an option for so many of us. So we just stay in motion.
00:07:34:05 - 00:08:01:26
Lisa
It's like this false belief that if we can do enough and control enough that, you know nothing will go sideways in our lives, and nothing can be further from the truth, because control is is truly just an illusion. So the grief of the machine becomes this. Like recognizing that you have placed all your value on who you are for what you do versus who you are.
00:08:01:29 - 00:08:36:13
Lisa
Okay, so the value is about what you do, what you produce, not who you are, because you're seen as the the trusted depended, the dependable one, the one who's admired. And often part of the grief that comes up is in the quiet moments when you're starting to wonder if anyone actually sees who you are underneath all of this, because you've been, you've you've put up this persona as the one that can be reliable and capable and that you'll handle all the things so often.
00:08:36:16 - 00:09:03:19
Lisa
Excuse me. What happens is nobody ever asks you how you're doing because everybody assumes you're fine and you've led them to believe that. So recognizing the part of you that wants to be held wants to be taken care of, but also that you've created this persona that you don't need that, that you're fine. My clients often joke that fine comes in in varying degrees of inflection, but it never means that you're actually fine.
00:09:03:21 - 00:09:33:00
Lisa
And I always say, like, fine is not a feeling. So if something does come to the surface for you, you know, like a heaviness in your chest or, you know, you feel emotion in your body, you shut it down super fast because emotions were never useful for you. You learn that they just slow you down, that they don't solve anything, and you've learned to just push past them the same way you push past everything else in your life.
00:09:33:03 - 00:09:58:21
Lisa
But the grief, the emotion, the things you're trying to run is still there, but it just shows up differently. For machines. It shows up in the flatness. When you accomplish something, there's no real like wind to it for you. It shows up in this low grade exhaustion that rust never seems to fix, and it shows up in the resentment that you feel towards people who depend on you.
00:09:58:24 - 00:10:25:27
Lisa
And then you can also feel guilty for feeling resentful. And that's often the grief that you don't let yourself name that you're experiencing all of these. So when we when the machine starts to grief this pattern so that we can come to a place of congruence, it means letting yourself feel how tired, how tired you actually are underneath your capability, and recognizing that no vacation is going to fix it.
00:10:25:29 - 00:11:05:01
Lisa
It's recognizing, like the tiredness comes from decades of caring things that were never really yours to carry it. It's the grief from noticing what happens in your body when you actually stop. Like, not collapse, but like choose to stop. And how wildly uncomfortable, stopping feels like stillness doesn't feel still for you. It's the grief of of what happens when your jaw finally unclench and your shoulders drop, and knowing that your body can let go.
00:11:05:04 - 00:11:30:09
Lisa
But relief doesn't feel like relief. There's there's a lot of grief in that, in recognizing, like, you so badly want to slow down and you want to rest, but you actually don't know what rest truly feels like because it it legitimately does not feel safe in your body, because your body has learned that you're constantly bracing for the next thing.
00:11:30:11 - 00:11:52:20
Lisa
So grieving this means sitting with the realization that you've you've literally trained the people around you to stop offering to help because, you know, you just you never let people see that you you want help, so you want help, but you don't want help because you want to be able to do it yourself. They're not going to do it as well as you, but you also recognize that it's exhausting you.
00:11:52:22 - 00:12:14:01
Lisa
So the grief of recognizing that you've trained people how to treat you. It also means feeling the sadness of all the moments when you kept pushing yourself to keep going, when you know you really just needed to give yourself permission to stop.
00:12:14:03 - 00:12:43:26
Lisa
It also means sitting with the grief that, you probably don't even know what it feels like to be taken care of because you've been the one doing the caring for so long and receiving, being cared for and held. You don't even have a frame of reference. And I see this in my clients all the time, because part of the space I hold for them as we unwind this machine energy is that they get witnessed, right.
00:12:43:26 - 00:13:07:18
Lisa
I'm there to hold them in this energy of being vulnerable, because in my space that you don't hire me so that you can lead me. You hire me so that you can exhale and I can lead you. I create vulnerable spaces for the men and women that I work with, so they can finally learn to exhale and know that it's going to be safe for them to do that.
00:13:07:20 - 00:13:32:22
Lisa
So again, it's not about taking away their ambition and drive and telling them to nap all the time. It's about allowing themselves to slow down in my container and actually witness what they're feeling, and express it as they do begin to soften around this so the machine becomes congruent. Not when they stop doing, but when doing becomes a choice versus a compulsion.
00:13:32:25 - 00:13:56:08
Lisa
I'm always going to be a doer. I'm always going to execute. I'm always going to be a leader, and things are always going to get done. But the difference now is that the urgency underneath productivity is gone for me, right? Like I always say, you know, there's nothing on fire in my business. Yet. If you had come to me a decade ago, everything was on fire because I believed everything needed to be on fire.
00:13:56:10 - 00:14:22:26
Lisa
So there's no sense of urgency anymore. I am not creating oxygen here. So I use productivity intentionally, but not reactively. I delegate and let things be done. Like my team, my hand. I'm constantly handing things to my team. Whereas before I needed to do all of that because I needed my calendar to be full, because it didn't feel it didn't feel good for me to have space on my calendar.
00:14:22:29 - 00:14:40:19
Lisa
So now I have white space on purpose and I don't feel it. I let people help me, even if they don't do it in a way that I would want them to do it. I mean, there's been multiple times my team has produced stuff and I'm like, why do they use that picture? And then I'm like, who cares?
00:14:40:21 - 00:15:01:23
Lisa
Who cares? Least I like next. Because it doesn't matter because they're doing it versus me. I mean, I remember when we brought in a housekeeper and a nanny and she wanted to do our laundry, and I was like, oh my God, you can't do our laundry for us. Like, I need to do that. And when I just let it go, I was like, wow, this is amazing that I don't have to do this anymore.
00:15:01:23 - 00:15:30:14
Lisa
But I had to get over the part of me that's like, well, that's not how I would have folded this. Well, who really cares, Lisa? Because you didn't have to fold it. You didn't have to wash it. It was handled for you. So letting people help you is amazing. Also, what happens as you become congruent as a machine and you work with this archetype is you start to make decisions based on how you want to feel in your life, not just what you want to produce.
00:15:30:17 - 00:15:59:00
Lisa
So, you know, if I want to sit down in the middle of the afternoon without guilt, I can do that if I need to rest. Because when you are working this archetype from a congruent place, your worth is no longer tied to your output. And the most powerful part of you is not the one who carries everything. A congruent machine is the one who chooses what they carry.
00:15:59:03 - 00:16:24:02
Lisa
So, you know, the machine was just wrapped around every corner of my life. I was determined that I needed to create the outcomes, and we are responsible for the outcomes in our life. But it's not from doing more like being busy for the sake of busy will not necessarily produce better outcomes. That's like saying if you go to the gym five times in a day, you're going to get better results than if you just go once with intention.
00:16:24:05 - 00:16:53:02
Lisa
So I had to really look at what this what this, pattern was actually about. And it was truly that, you know, I had to if I wasn't being productive, it just it just didn't feel safe in my body. Like, I learned that, that so much of my worth was tied to my productivity. Like, look how much I got done today was like a big badge of often a big, big badge of honor for me.
00:16:53:04 - 00:17:17:13
Lisa
So, you know, when I was sitting in the therapist's office feeling, you know, like I'd broken, I didn't know who the hell I was anymore. I had to look at everything that I'd been building and how I'd been building it on these, coping behaviors that really weren't who I was. And, that my relentless doing was, was driven by fear.
00:17:17:15 - 00:17:40:14
Lisa
Not ambition, but fear. And I'd been living inside that fear of slowing down for so long. Like it, it had actually become who I thought I was. So you might be hearing this and thinking, wow, that sounds like me as well. So we're going to move on to the next archetype, which is the prover. And if I'm being completely honest with you, the prover still shows up in my life.
00:17:40:14 - 00:18:11:23
Lisa
This is the archetype that I probably get into the most wrestling matches with. So I'm going to go into what the proof looks like in the prover, because if you are, if you're a prover as well, there is a feeling that you've been trying to outrun for as long as you can remember, and almost everything you've achieved exists to make sure that you never have to be with those feelings.
00:18:11:25 - 00:18:45:00
Lisa
And the feeling is not being good enough and not being worthy. And it sucks to admit that, like, it sucks to admit that. Especially if you see yourself as a real high achiever, to look at it and go like, what am I achieve in all of this for? Because the fear that most provers never want to talk about is this fear of like, well, if I'm not good enough, if I'm not worthy, I'm going to be abandoned by all the people who I need their love and I need their acceptance, and I need this belonging.
00:18:45:00 - 00:18:52:28
Lisa
Right? It's it's like we're constantly working for our worthiness in our belonging.
00:18:53:00 - 00:19:00:25
Lisa
So feeling like you're not good enough isn't just uncomfortable. It feels like a threat.
00:19:00:27 - 00:19:31:01
Lisa
And that's what gives this pattern its urgency. So the grief of the prover starts here. It's, you know, knowing that you have achieved things that are genuinely impressive, but then also recognizing that you've never let them land in your body. It doesn't matter how many wins you get, it's recognizing that they're not actually turning into confidence because you won't allow yourself to feel confident.
00:19:31:04 - 00:19:55:17
Lisa
All that happens is that with everything you achieve, you set a higher baseline and a new standard, and now you have to maintain that standard. Which means the more you achieve, the more you have to keep achieving just to stay in the same kind of emotional place while at the same time never really feeling like you're at the emotional place you want to be.
00:19:55:20 - 00:20:15:00
Lisa
So you've built so much like when you start to sit with this, right? When I started to look at my own life, I looked at how much I had built, what I had actually accomplished, and how little of it I allowed myself to feel like pride I did. I didn't even know how to feel proud of myself because there was always something more.
00:20:15:02 - 00:20:38:11
Lisa
And grieving meant sitting with the full weight of that. It meant looking at my career that I built. Or in your case, you know, the goals you've hit, the things people have congratulated you for, and letting yourself feel the sadness that none of it gave you what you were actually looking for. This was my this was my entire life.
00:20:38:13 - 00:21:02:14
Lisa
It meant stopping long enough, right? The grief of this means stopping long enough to feel the exhaustion of decades, of earning something, of working to earn something that was never, ever going to arrive because you were never going to give it to yourself. It it means looking at the years you've spent chasing a feeling of wanting to be good enough.
00:21:02:21 - 00:21:26:06
Lisa
That was always one more achievement away. And it means letting go of the belief that the next one will finally be the one that gives you that feeling. Because that belief is the thing that keeps this pattern running, right. It's like, well, if I do this, then I'll feel good enough. And it's so subtle it runs under the surface.
00:21:26:06 - 00:21:45:28
Lisa
And then because we wrap it in ambition and wanting to do it, you know, we tell ourselves all these stories as to why we're doing these things because we don't actually want to admit to ourselves. Because as humans, we love to get into self-deception about the real reason we're doing a lot of this stuff is because we're trying to prove to the world and to ourselves, right?
00:21:45:28 - 00:22:09:22
Lisa
It's not even about proving it to the world, to be honest. We're trying to prove to ourselves that we're worthy and deserving, and there's a loneliness inside that pattern that is so hard to name, because you're rarely actually alone. Provers are surrounded by people who respect and admire what they've built, people who look to you as someone who has it figured out.
00:22:09:24 - 00:22:42:28
Lisa
But often very few people actually know you. Because if you really wanted people to know you, you'd have to show them the parts of you that doubt the parts of you that question, and the parts of you that don't have it figured out. And that can feel very, very vulnerable. And this is why inside my coaching containers, my people get to really see into me and the stuff that I'm working through, because my job as a coach and a leader is to reflect back what is true.
00:22:43:01 - 00:23:15:20
Lisa
And for all the people that I've met that present, like they've got their shit together, they are the ones that are the hardest on themselves in the back end. And unless we're willing to be open and vulnerable, we don't really grow. So, you know, the grief for so many of you is that the very strategy that you're using to belong is the thing that is actually keeping belonging at arm's length from you and grieving.
00:23:15:20 - 00:23:35:19
Lisa
Part of the grieving is letting yourself feel how alone you've actually felt, even though you're in a room full of people who admire you because you feel like nobody really knows you, right? You feel like, an imposter. This is a thing that comes up for provers. They always feel like they're imposters.
00:23:35:22 - 00:23:55:27
Lisa
It means also that you have to acknowledge how many conversations you've curated, how many moments you've managed, and how many times you've showed the figured out part of who you are instead of the real one. Because letting people see who you really are underneath it feels so risky.
00:23:56:00 - 00:24:24:22
Lisa
It means sitting with the possibility that the people closest to you might have wanted the unpolished part of you all along, but you never gave people the chance to really see you. And it means grieving the connections you could have had if you weren't so busy trying to prove and earn your place in relationships. And this has been a really big one for me, is, you know, I have to really watch where I'm not still guarding myself.
00:24:24:22 - 00:24:46:17
Lisa
So I'm very good at letting all the walls down with clients inside my containers. And I can still notice myself getting into the proving pattern when I'm out in the world. Right? Like, what will they think if they if I admit to them that I'm feeling insecure about this, or I'm not feeling as confident as I could be?
00:24:46:19 - 00:25:15:21
Lisa
So this gap between who people see in you and what you actually feel is often exhausted or sorry is often exhausting. I'm losing my words here today. It's exhausting to maintain that right? Because you're not congruent. You're presenting one version of yourself outside that looks together, and then on the inside, you're quietly like, you know, questioning, if you even belong in rooms, if you're ever going to be good enough.
00:25:15:24 - 00:25:46:25
Lisa
So, yeah, looking like you have it together and then on the inside, lying awake, wondering if you're really as good as they think you are, and nobody knows that this is even happening because you keep it quiet, because your identity would be so threatened if people know, like I've even had I've been I've been nominated for awards. I've been like, nope, I am not going to put in the proper application for this because I don't want people to see behind the scenes like, I don't know what I'm doing yet.
00:25:47:00 - 00:26:06:06
Lisa
I always did, you know, I was figuring it out just like every other business person entrepreneur out there. But I had earned the right to to be nominated for this award. It's so it's it's really the grief that I've had to sit with about how hard I was on myself because it was like, well, I'm not there yet.
00:26:06:06 - 00:26:26:09
Lisa
I'm not there yet. I'm not there yet. That's what the prover is always chasing. I'm not there yet, which means you never get to be there. So, you know, my whole life and this might be true for you as well. You're what? You spend your whole life trying to feel something, thinking that your achievements are going to give it to you.
00:26:26:09 - 00:26:48:25
Lisa
But there, that's not your achievements are never capable of giving you that, because you're always going to hold it at harms arm's length. Not because you haven't achieved enough, but because the thing that you're actually looking for, the feeling was never on the other side of of achievement, the feeling of being enough just as you are. You don't need proof.
00:26:48:27 - 00:27:09:22
Lisa
Like we don't actually need to go and earn proof that we are good enough for any of you listening who have children. You know when when they put that baby on your chest, or your dad and you hold your baby for the first time, that child doesn't need to do anything to earn your love. It doesn't need to do anything.
00:27:09:25 - 00:27:39:25
Lisa
We all come into this planet not having to earn our worthiness. It's somewhere along the way, right? This is where these archetypes are born. We believe that we do. It's the dismantling of the prover is really, really powerful. So it wasn't until I really took ownership of, you know what, Lisa? You get to be enough. Like, there's nothing that you need to prove to anybody, and there's nothing that you need to prove to yourself.
00:27:39:28 - 00:27:54:26
Lisa
But, man, there was a lot of grief in that because I was really, really attached to that part of me who wanted to to believe I wasn't good enough. And it can still come up for me. How come I'm not in that room? Why doesn't that person want to be friends with me? Maybe I need to work harder.
00:27:54:26 - 00:28:13:18
Lisa
Like it's crazy in the ways that will still show up. I'm going to be speaking at an event in Toronto, and I got the list of speakers and people in attendance and I'm like, oh my God, Lisa, who do you think you are to be in that room? I had to whoa! Stop it. Like, you don't have to prove anything to anybody in that room.
00:28:13:18 - 00:28:27:26
Lisa
Just go and be yourself. Do what you do. So the grief around that version of you that was really so hard on you for so many years or decades.
00:28:27:28 - 00:28:48:24
Lisa
That is the grief. So again, you know, my entire life I hooked myself on to what I could accomplish, the goals I could achieve to help me stand out. You know, if I couldn't be smart enough, then I could excel in other areas. You know, I was always earning awards for my dancing. And then I moved into fitness competitions.
00:28:48:26 - 00:29:09:01
Lisa
And then I had, you know, my business to be ordinary felt threatening to me. So I just so latched on to doing extraordinary things. So I would stand out. So I would feel like that I was more than good enough. But I never felt that way. Like I, I chased the feeling of good enough, but never actually allowed anything to be good enough.
00:29:09:01 - 00:29:28:29
Lisa
And no amount of awards, certificates or ever it or any of it ever satisfied that underlying feeling that I was enough. I mean, I would walk off my walk off stage after doing my fitness competitions, and I would never watch my routines because I was like, oh, I could have done, I could have done better. That could have done better.
00:29:29:00 - 00:29:47:16
Lisa
Even though I was placing right in the top three, most of the times when I competed, I was always in the top. Still wasn't good enough. I still could have done better. I have so many certificates that I never even took out of envelopes. I built a successful and profitable business where I work with men and women from around the globe.
00:29:47:16 - 00:30:07:26
Lisa
I've written a book, I've created courses, and none of it. I was like, oh, but that's still not good enough because I was always measuring it against something else or someone else. So people would tell me how they saw me and I would think, well, they if they knew the truth, though, if they knew the truth, they wouldn't be saying that.
00:30:08:00 - 00:30:31:28
Lisa
So this is what I mean about how it feels so lonely. Because I constantly believed that I was I was living a lie because that's how powerful the prover was in me. So again, it has definitely way softened over the years for me, but it is still one of my primary archetypes. And I have to be very, very mindful that I work from a congruent place with my prover.
00:30:32:00 - 00:30:54:08
Lisa
So let's talk about what that looks like when you are congruent, because it's not about stopping achieving things, or that you don't have ambition anymore, it's just that you're running on desire now instead of fear. I still set goals and you still get to set goals and you still get to build, and you get to still pursue things that matter to you.
00:30:54:11 - 00:31:23:03
Lisa
But the shame underneath that I'm not good enough goes away. You achieve things because it's an expression of who you are, not a way to try and outrun the feelings of I'm not good enough, or that you don't matter enough. You're able to receive recognition without deflecting it. I've had so many beautiful things reflected to me this week, and I've I've just really sat with like, what they're telling you, Lisa, is true.
00:31:23:03 - 00:31:39:02
Lisa
Receive it in your body. Don't push it away. So when somebody says something to you, receive it as truth. Let it sit in your body. Don't deflect it back.
00:31:39:04 - 00:32:03:21
Lisa
Let winds land. This is so powerful for the prover. Like let winds land before you just set another goal. Like really allow yourself to feel proud. Acknowledge yourself, give yourself high fives. This is like you would do that with your children, with someone you love. Did they accomplish something amazing? You'd be like, oh my God, we need to celebrate.
00:32:03:24 - 00:32:29:05
Lisa
I'm so proud of you. Start to do that with yourself. That's what congruency in a prover is. And the other thing, you know, start to let people in, not just to the polished part of you, but the part of you that's still figuring things out. And you will learn that it doesn't cost you connection. It creates deeper connection, it deepens it.
00:32:29:07 - 00:32:59:11
Lisa
But you have to be willing to move out of this prover archetype. You have to be willing to expand your capacity to hold vulnerability because that's what it takes. The prover feels threatened by vulnerability, and you want to be able to lean into it and say, okay, I'm going to allow myself to be vulnerable. And this is why the spaces that I create for my clients are so powerful, because they feel safe to be vulnerable with me.
00:32:59:13 - 00:33:23:04
Lisa
And it's in that vulnerability that they grow and that these patterns start to unravel. So, you know, you really know you're working from a place of congruence is when the most powerful one of you, the most powerful part of you, I should say, is not the one who needs to keep proving. It's knowing that you finally don't have to.
00:33:23:06 - 00:33:51:06
Lisa
And again, it's not about this being perfect. Because I'm not a perfectly congruent prover. I still get into some stuff, as we all will because we're all human, but it's how can we soften these patterns so that we're not just blindly living in them? How can we move through the grief of what we've done to ourselves for years and decades, so that we can start to let go of these parts of ourselves?
00:33:51:09 - 00:34:15:13
Lisa
Okay, so we're going to talk about the polishers grief. So if you're a polisher oh my. Oh, there is a feeling that sits underneath every revision, every delay, every not yet. And it's this feeling of being exposed, right? Not wanting to be exposed but not exposed as a fraud. Exactly. But exposed as someone who isn't as together as they appear.
00:34:15:13 - 00:34:35:10
Lisa
So the the polisher and the prover really like, you know, they're bedfellows. And I used to live really in the land of polisher a lot. Not so much these days. But, I mean, I remember someone saying to me once, God, you're so hard on yourself. And I was trying to look like I had it totally together, and it was devastating for me.
00:34:35:10 - 00:35:16:06
Lisa
I felt so vulnerable and exposed in that moment. So The Polisher has to grieve the part that believe that if people see the mess, if they see unfinished work, if they see you before, you've had time to refine how you show up. That that has actually felt like a threat to you, a threat in your body. So this is why you keep polishing and refining, because you're trying to stay ahead of the thing that you really can't tolerate, which is people seeing like really seeing you, seeing you before you're ready.
00:35:16:08 - 00:35:39:14
Lisa
So the grief of the polisher is having really, really looking at how often you've delayed your own life, waiting for things to be right and having to realize that they were never going to be. You literally been running a race with no finish line, run by a judge, with no scorecard towards a feeling of readiness that was always going to be just out of reach.
00:35:39:16 - 00:36:02:07
Lisa
Grieving. This means letting yourself feel the weight of how much of your life you have postponed, waiting for things to be right. It means looking at all the projects you never launched, the conversations you rehearsed, instead of having the opportunities you let pass because you weren't ready yet, and also recognizing you were never going to allow yourself to be ready.
00:36:02:09 - 00:36:30:06
Lisa
It means sitting with the sadness that that readiness was never coming, because perfect really has no finish line, and that voice was never going to allow you to say yes to these things. Man. When I look back on my life and the things that I passed up on because I was terrified, you know, if we go back to that award, it's like I couldn't because I didn't have a polished enough business behind the scenes.
00:36:30:06 - 00:36:51:25
Lisa
There were so many things I did not want people to know about. Instead of recognizing, like what I had built and celebrating that, you know, I really thought everything needed to be perfect in my business before I could celebrate what I built. And the more entrepreneurs that I talked to and people you know, even in CEO positions, none of us know what we're doing.
00:36:51:25 - 00:37:13:21
Lisa
We're figuring it out as we go. But so many of us are trying to give off this impression that we have it together. So in order to let go of the polisher, it's letting go of all these beliefs and stories that you've been telling yourself about how things need to look in order for you to be, to not be judged in the world.
00:37:13:23 - 00:37:45:16
Lisa
So underneath all of this, there's this voice that is always going to tell you that the project isn't ready, but that you aren't ready yet either. So your body's never going to be perfect enough. Your image isn't going to be perfect enough. It's the polisher gets into wars with themselves over their reflection, their image not being good enough or polished enough.
00:37:45:22 - 00:38:13:08
Lisa
Right. And if you're if your branding was just this way, then you'd be successful. If your body look this way, then you'd be successful. There's a lot of grief in that, as well as looking at how many things you wanted to make about circumstances instead of looking at like, what if that's not true, right? The lies, the lies the polisher has told themselves and all the archetypes, all the archetypes are about lying to try and innocently protect you.
00:38:13:10 - 00:38:35:21
Lisa
So grief and acceptance is not really the answer that most polishers want to hear, because it it sounds like giving up, whereas acceptance is not giving up. It's just conflict. Coming to this place of understanding like, this is what is here today, and I'm going to stop warring with myself. So I'm going to stop living in the past.
00:38:35:24 - 00:38:46:19
Lisa
I'm going to be I'm going to stop being afraid of the future. And what can I just move forward today? Can it be good enough today?
00:38:46:22 - 00:39:09:23
Lisa
So the polisher in me used to tick every box in the book to avoid being judged again. You know, I would have this perfect polished look because that would it would almost be like a repellant, right? Like people wouldn't approach me and I liked it that way because then they wouldn't see how insecure I was, underneath all of it.
00:39:09:25 - 00:39:56:10
Lisa
So, you know, it was like a way of of stopping people from accessing me unless they were in my close inner circle. But to like the general public, I didn't want anybody to know. So. And the polisher would show up in such interesting ways. Right. Like if I could just get the font right on my website, if the colors were just perfect, if the branding was just perfect, and all I was trying to do was manage other people's interpretations of me, sort of realize how much energy I was spending trying to manage other people's interpretations of me, while never also looking at like how deeply I was judging myself.
00:39:56:13 - 00:40:24:01
Lisa
I was literally trying to outrun this feeling of like, well, I'm again, I'm just not good enough, so I'm just going to make it look perfect, and then maybe nobody will see that I'm not good enough. But none of that was none of that was ever true. So grieving the part of me that really believed and worked so hard to protect me, it was really hard to let go of and to do things where it was just like, okay, I'm done, right?
00:40:24:01 - 00:40:59:15
Lisa
Like I'm going to shoot the video with no makeup on. I'm going to launch the website before it's ready. I'm going to I'm going to sell this thing with a Google Doc fractal, letting things be messy, but letting them be done, letting myself be unpolished and allowing myself to work the range. I still like to get dressed up and look pretty, but if I'm going to do that, if I'm going to come in like looking like a boss, then it's on me to lower my defenses and be the first person to walk up to somebody in the room so that they feel welcomed in my energy, instead of using this like perfect look to
00:40:59:15 - 00:41:03:19
Lisa
repel people.
00:41:03:22 - 00:41:19:00
Lisa
So the grief that comes from recognizing that the judgment that you've spent your whole life trying to avoid in others was never really about them. It's always been about the judgment you've been caring about yourself.
00:41:19:02 - 00:41:30:16
Lisa
Nobody's been watching you as closely as you thought. And the harshest critiqued has always been inside the room with you and always will be.
00:41:30:19 - 00:41:43:16
Lisa
So this like grieving that, grieving that critic, letting that critic go, really looking at again the lies that they've been telling you.
00:41:43:18 - 00:42:10:16
Lisa
Because you know what? What's fascinating in having children is recognizing, like when they're getting into their perfection and how I see it and I see how damaging it is, and I won't tolerate that in my kids, but how often I tolerated it in myself. So the polisher becomes congruent, not by lowering our standards, but your standards need to run on your values, not on fear.
00:42:10:18 - 00:42:40:21
Lisa
So my values around connection and authenticity and intimacy means that I cannot work from the polisher, because then I'm not congruent with the values that mean so much to me. So I still care about quality. I still notice things that other people might miss. And I don't care. I still bring precision and care to the things that matter.
00:42:40:23 - 00:43:08:02
Lisa
But a congruent polisher knows the difference between excellent and perfect. And I'm going to choose excellent every time, because excellent is something I can work with and perfect I will never achieve. And I mean, now with the onset of I, I mean, you could literally sit and polish something indefinitely. There's always going to be a better version. So for any polishers listening like be cautious because I can be such a trap for your archetype.
00:43:08:04 - 00:43:35:13
Lisa
So how I work with this is you get to define what excellent means before you start a project so that you have criteria for what Don looks like, and then you respect the boundary that you've set when you reach it. So you finish things, you stop procrastinating. You put work into the world before it feels completely airtight, and you'll discover that the world will receive it.
00:43:35:13 - 00:44:03:11
Lisa
Well, I just had a client this past week who didn't like the videos that were done for her. I looked at the videos and I'm like, I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm not seeing what you're seeing. So again, softening how we're interpreting things because it really isn't about the video, it's about how we're feeling about ourselves and how we're trying to control how other people see us or interpret us.
00:44:03:13 - 00:44:24:16
Lisa
A congruent polisher can look in the mirror and move on with his or her day. Without the commentary, you can be in a conversation without trying to manage how it lands with somebody else. So you show up and you're responsible for your words you're putting out, but you're not trying to say the perfect thing or be the perfect person in the conversation.
00:44:24:18 - 00:45:03:21
Lisa
You can be seen in the middle of something when it's unfinished and uncertain, and you're still figuring it out and not abort mission. And it also means that you can hold the discomfort of things not being, quote unquote perfect, because you finally understand that the discomfort of being seen is nothing compared to the cost that you will pay if you continue to live from this unrealistic standard that you set for yourself that you can never measure.
00:45:03:24 - 00:45:18:26
Lisa
All right. The last of the archetypes is the giver. I'm going to talk about the givers grief. Oh man, I know about the giver to them. So if you are the giver.
00:45:18:28 - 00:45:43:10
Lisa
You've been avoiding something for a very long time, and it's not a feeling so much as it is a reckoning that if you stop giving, if you stop anticipating other people's needs, if you stop being the one who holds it all together for everyone else, you'll have to face how very little you valued yourself compared to everyone else around you.
00:45:43:13 - 00:46:05:28
Lisa
And that realization has been waiting underneath the giver pattern for a very long time, which is why you keep filling your space with other people's needs instead of looking at your own. The grief of the giver is for the part of you who learned that making everyone else more important was the price you had to pay for being loved.
00:46:06:01 - 00:46:35:17
Lisa
For how long you've been saying yes when you so badly wanted to say no, for how much resentment you've carried towards the people you love, and how quickly guilt follows it. Every time you feel resentment for the fact that you train people around you to need you, by never letting them see that you need anything, and grieving this means letting yourself feel the anger that you've been swallowing for years.
00:46:35:19 - 00:47:15:25
Lisa
The anger at being the one who always adjusts, always accommodates, always put yourself last and then feels guilty for feeling angry about it. It means sitting with how many times you've abandoned yourself to make someone else comfortable, how many times you've adjusted who you were, what you wanted, what you felt to accommodate someone else's emotions. It means letting yourself see this pattern so clearly, and feeling the grief of how many parts of yourself you left behind in those moments, quietly, without anyone noticing, including you.
00:47:15:27 - 00:47:42:11
Lisa
It means sitting with how invisible you felt inside relationships, where you're often the most visible person in the room. It means acknowledging that you don't actually know what you want because you've spent so long attending to what everyone else wants. Your own desires kind of want quiet, and it means grieving the part of yourself you lost along the way, not all at once, but slowly.
00:47:42:11 - 00:47:52:06
Lisa
One yes at a time, until you woke up and couldn't remember who you are outside of what you do for people.
00:47:52:08 - 00:48:16:29
Lisa
You know my own givers. Grief. Like I had to look at how much I was giving to other people and why I was doing it. I wanted to believe that I was this good, kind person, and I was. But the truth is, there was a deep desire for me to feel important and to feel love and to feel cared for in a way that I was unable to give myself.
00:48:17:01 - 00:48:29:05
Lisa
So I would give to people. But I was really looking to get something back from them. I wasn't just giving to them for the sake of giving, and all of this was happening at an unconscious level.
00:48:29:07 - 00:48:53:14
Lisa
But what I was really doing was I was compensating for my own. Like, how do I say this? I would make sure everybody else's needs were were met and that they were feeling loved and cared for because I really didn't know how to give that to myself. Right. So I was projecting the things that I actually needed onto other onto other people.
00:48:53:16 - 00:49:16:13
Lisa
So I had built an entire version of generosity and care that that really looked like love, but it was actually me trying to get something from other people. And that's really, really hard to admit. You know, like, I would I would constantly be jumping in to save people thinking that I was a really good person, but I was looking for I was looking to feel important.
00:49:16:19 - 00:49:36:08
Lisa
I was looking to feel needed. I was looking to feel like I was enough, and this was how I was going to. I was going to get it. I was going to get it through meeting the needs of other people. And, you know, a big part of the givers journey to congruence is understanding, like how it's important for us to meet our own needs.
00:49:36:08 - 00:50:06:03
Lisa
So we're always going to need love, safety and belonging in all relationships. But it's looking at how we can create that, how we can become the giver to ourselves, how we can create that love, safety and belonging from inside ourselves. That's what being an adult is. It's taking responsibility for those things. So you probably heard me say, if you've been around a long enough that I say things we love and we value, we take care of, and most of you are not putting yourselves on that list.
00:50:06:03 - 00:50:21:12
Lisa
I know I wasn't, and the grief is in realizing how long you have not been on your own list, and that nobody left you off the list. You just you left yourself off the list.
00:50:21:14 - 00:50:44:12
Lisa
So the giver to step into congruence. It's not that you stop caring for others, but you finally start making yourself someone you care for. To you. You still get to give. You still get to show up for the people you love. You still hold space and create connection in ways that are amazing and rare. Because I know my people have such giant hearts.
00:50:44:14 - 00:51:03:03
Lisa
But I talk about it as being clean giving. You're giving now without attachment. You're not needing something back from someone you're not looking to get. Not love, not approval, not belonging. You give because you want to, not because you're afraid of what happens if you don't.
00:51:03:05 - 00:51:28:29
Lisa
You can say no without a paragraph of justification and without a week of guilt. The follows it. Congruent givers can set boundaries and understand that it's your responsibility to hold it. It's not the other person's responsibility to change, and you can be with whatever discomfort comes up for them. So congruent giver can hold uncomfortable feelings within themselves, right?
00:51:28:29 - 00:51:59:23
Lisa
You can sit with your own discomfort when someone is unhappy with you and not break or collapse or rush in to fix it because you know the relationship can survive. A congruent giver lets people be responsible for themselves. They say, like, I'm here with you, but I know you've got this and I'm here for you, right? We don't put our hands on and try and fix everything because we're looking for our own self-importance and a congruent giver.
00:51:59:25 - 00:52:09:15
Lisa
Like I said, we can hold our own emotion and we can be in other people's emotions. Givers really love to fix other people.
00:52:09:17 - 00:52:31:10
Lisa
You can receive care without immediately trying to reciprocate. And this goes for compliments as well. You can just let it land and be for you. And when someone asks you what you need or what you want, you actually have an answer. And maybe not immediately. Because it does take practice for someone who's spent years not asking themselves that question.
00:52:31:12 - 00:52:51:21
Lisa
But eventually, slowly, you will find your way back to yourself. And it's not because you've given less to other people, it's that you've you've made sure your yeses are clean and your nose are clean, and you've also made yourself someone that you give to.
00:52:51:23 - 00:53:18:08
Lisa
So these are four different patterns, and there are lots of different feelings underneath all of them, ones that everybody's trying to avoid. And there's different grief for each of them. But the same thing at the center of every single one of these patterns is a child who built a strategy to feel safe, loved, and like they belonged. And your adult self has been loyal to that strategies ever since.
00:53:18:08 - 00:53:33:18
Lisa
And you never looked at it. And the loyalty makes complete sense because these small parts of you kept you safe. They helped make you feel successful. It made you the person that people count on, admire, and trust.
00:53:33:21 - 00:54:05:01
Lisa
But if you're being honest, you were working with a child's understanding of what you needed to do to survive, and you're not a child anymore, so you don't have to keep living inside of these survival strategies you build back then. Not the strength, not the capability, not the care you get to put down these coping mechanisms or survival strategies that have been running the show without you ever checking in, without you ever updating the operating system.
00:54:05:03 - 00:54:25:24
Lisa
This is why grief is so important, right? Because it's literally getting you through the stages of grief. So you can start to release these parts of yourself that are actually preventing you from having the life you want. And I don't want to leave you in this grief. I wanted to point it out to you so you have a clear understanding of what it looks like within each archetype.
00:54:25:27 - 00:54:55:14
Lisa
But grief is just a doorway. It's not a destination, and what's on the other side of your grief is not a smaller part of you. It's you're not going to be less driven or less capable or less caring. It's you with the same strengths, but they're running from a completely different place. Choice instead of compulsion, desire instead of fear, and personal responsibility instead of a child's contract that you made way back in the day.
00:54:55:17 - 00:55:37:19
Lisa
That's congruence. That's when success feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside. When you can work with your archetypes instead of your archetypes driving you, and you can't get there by thinking about it. You can't get there by trying to understand it more clearly. You get there by walking through that ring of fire, by feeling what you've been avoiding, by acknowledging these parts, by acknowledging these patterns, by seeing what they've cost you, and then choosing from the other side of that grief who you want to become now grieve what you didn't get.
00:55:37:19 - 00:55:56:21
Lisa
Because for many of us, it's it's not the things that happen to us, it's the things that we never received. But going through grieving allows you to get to this place of acceptance. This was my life. This is what happened. I don't know why I had all four of these archetypes turned up to like volume ten, but I did.
00:55:56:21 - 00:56:09:21
Lisa
This was my path. This was my journey. And I'm grateful for it, truly, because it allows me to do this deep work with my clients from a context that most people don't have.
00:56:09:24 - 00:56:38:16
Lisa
And I get to be responsible for each of my archetypes now and how I want to rewire them. The work that I get to do on myself to to come to a place of congruence about who I really am, not who I thought I was. I'm so far from that broken version that walked into that therapist's office, and I'm so grateful that everything got pulled apart, that I've been able to take off and talk about it like Joey Tribbiani and friends when he came in wearing all of Chandler's clothes.
00:56:38:16 - 00:56:59:01
Lisa
Right? Like I've taken off all the things that don't belong to me, and I still have layers to take off, and that's okay. And I'm good enough as I am right now. I get to do this work, you get to do this work. And that's what personal responsibility looks like.
00:56:59:03 - 00:57:22:16
Lisa
So the grief, you know, the grief has definitely softened over the years. I'm still learning, and there's no right way to do this. It's just a willingness to continue to be curious and self-reflective and not beating myself up. And I'm extending that invitation to you as well, because we're just here to learn like we are just here to learn.
00:57:22:18 - 00:57:46:11
Lisa
So this series was called What No One Can't Fix. And here's what Knowing Can't fix. Hopefully you've gotten it now is that knowing can't fix the feeling underneath the pattern. Knowing can't get you through grief. Grief is a feeling problem, and the identity you've been loyal to since you were very young. You can. You can know it. You can name it all.
00:57:46:13 - 00:58:06:10
Lisa
But if it's not moving, it's because you're not willing to feel the grief that's been driving the pattern. It's it's because you're not willing to look at the parts of you that are asking you to let go of them. And any time we let go of anything it comes with, with grief. And you can only you can decide when you're ready to do that.
00:58:06:12 - 00:58:25:00
Lisa
So if you listen to this whole series without taking the quiz, what are you even doing? Go take it now. Lisa Carpenter, aka forge slash quiz. Because you heard all four archetypes and your mind is probably telling you which one you are, but the quiz will show you which one your body has been running, and those might be two different answers.
00:58:25:06 - 00:58:43:27
Lisa
You might be like me all four, but we're going to give you your top two. There's no right or wrong here. If you've already done a significant amount of self-development and you read some of the questions, you think, oh, that used to be me, great. Answer it from the it used to be you because it's still going to point you towards your patterns.
00:58:44:03 - 00:59:07:10
Lisa
So even though I'm no longer predominantly a machine, I still like these archetypes are all still in me. Okay, this series was was built to be shared. I really wanted to talk about the pieces that I believe where self-development is doing so many of you dirty and not really giving you the honest, the honest.
00:59:07:12 - 00:59:38:13
Lisa
Perspective of what it takes to truly transform your life. You just can't think your way through it. We have to come back to being feeling beings. And when so many of you learned that feelings had no value, that's a lesson in itself to learn how to come back, to feel. So if there's someone in your life who's done the work, who has a lot of awareness and is wondering, like why they just can't get over their shit, please send them episode one and let the series do the rest.
00:59:38:16 - 01:00:02:14
Lisa
So thank you so much for being here. Thank you for walking. Kind of down a path of memory lane for me. And I hope that in listening to this, you're not only understanding your own grief, but you're seeing what's possible through my story. What's on the other side of this grief? Some of it has been the most painful work I've ever done, and it's also been the most rewarding.
01:00:02:16 - 01:00:32:24
Lisa
And it's now why I can hold such sacred and vulnerable space for my clients as they go through this process. Because I'm not just talking about what it looks like to grieve. I've lived grief in so many different iterations for so many different parts of myself. There's a lived experience and wisdom that I carry that many coaches don't, and I see a lot of in congruency in the coaching space, a lot of lack of integrity.
01:00:32:26 - 01:00:58:18
Lisa
He never going to find that here. So thank you so much for tuning in, to this week's episode. I hope you enjoyed it. And I will be back next week. On another topic around the success paradox and how you can really step into loving who you are, loving the success you built, but feeling the success that you built.
01:00:58:21 - 01:01:01:16
Lisa
Take good care of you and I'll catch you on the other side.
