There is a version of you that you already know. In fact, you probably know quite a lot about her, actually.

You know how she leads herself.

You know what shit she no longer puts up with.

You know the boundaries she has with other people (and herself).

You know exactly how she looks after herself.

You know what her life and business looks like, how she handles money, how she makes decisions and the things she finally has the confidence to do.

Maybe you’ve journaled extensively about her and visualised her down to what she’s wearing.

Perhaps you’ve even created a corresponding vision board and written yourself a letter from your future self.

You might even have asked yourself what she’d do.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I absolutely LOVE all of that work. I’m totally here for it.

But I personally think that there’s also a bit of a problem with Future Her.

In that we can get so bloody good at imagining her that we accidentally keep her permanently in the future.

And that’s where the Identity Gap begins.

The Identity Gap is the distance between the person you know you want to be.

And the person you’re actually being.

And you don’t close that gap by just knowing more about her.

You close it by creating evidence of her.

The future-self trap

Future-self work can be so incredibly powerful and I truly and wholeheartedly advocate for it. If you can’t imagine something different, it’s really bloody difficult to create it.

But just notice how easily the language of the future can turn into permission to wait.

When I earn more money, I’ll be more confident.

When the business grows, I’ll start leading like a CEO.

When I’ve lost the weight, I’ll wear the clothes.

When I’ve healed, I’ll put myself out there.

When I’ve done another qualification, I’ll call myself the expert.

When I’ve got more followers, I’ll start being visible.

When someone invites me onto the stage, I’ll believe I’m a speaker.

When someone else tells me I’m ready…

Then….

We create this magnificent future version of ourselves… and then wait for the day we finally become her.

Except she isn’t going to ring your doorbell one random morning and go, “hey, I’m your Designed Self from the future. Sorry I’m late. Traffic was fucking terrible.”

She isn’t coming to save you.

And I honestly don’t mean that in a depressing way. I mean it in the most liberating way possible.

Because if she isn’t coming, you don’t have to wait for her.

You don’t arrive at an identity. You build one.

I was reminded of this very powerfully when I created my first Be You Now identity reinvention event in London.

Six months earlier, I was still employed full-time. I had huge responsibility in that job. I was preparing to have surgery on an arm that had already been broken for nine months. I was permanently exhausted, and my own side hustle was going through another enormous reinvention.

If you’d shown me a photograph of myself six months later, standing on a London stage at my own event, teaching my own intellectual property, surrounded by incredible speakers and partners and a room full of founders and business owners who had bought tickets to be there, I’m not sure I’d have believed you. In fact, I absolutely KNOW I wouldn’t have believed you.

And yet the really ridiculous part is that Be You Now went from launch to event in just over six weeks.

I didn’t spend six weeks feeling completely ready.

Jesus Christ, no.

I didn’t wake up one morning with a fully installed Event Host Identity and calmly proceed from there.

I made one decision.

Then another.

I sent the email.

Booked the venue.

Asked the partners.

Sold the tickets.

Created the content.

Ordered the brochures.

Dealt with the wobbles.

Kept going.

And eventually I stood in the room I’d imagined.

That’s when something clicked….

I didn’t become the woman capable of creating Be You Now and then create the event.

Creating the event was part of how I created evidence that I was that woman.

The action didn’t follow the identity. The action helped build it.

What is the Identity Gap?

The Identity Gap is the space between the identity you consciously want to live from and the identity your current behaviour is reinforcing.
And sometimes it’s bloody enormous.

You say:

I want to be a CEO.

But you’re still answering everything, doing everything and making yourself indispensable to every tiny part of your business.

You say:

I want to be known for what I do.

But you’re hiding from visibility until you feel confident enough to be seen.

You say:

My health is important.

But your body gets whatever energy is left after everybody else has had theirs.

You say:

I want financial freedom.

But you’re scared shitless to look at your bank account.

You say:

My time matters.

But you’re permanently available and continually overriding your own boundaries.

You say:

I want support.

But whenever somebody offers it, you insist you’ve got it covered.

Hello 👋  More on that particular one shortly!

The Identity Gap isn’t necessarily about what you don’t know.

Often, you know perfectly bloody well.

The gap is between knowing and being.

Self-awareness is not transformation

We’re living through an amazing period of self-awareness.

We know our attachment styles.

Our personality types.

Our nervous-system responses.

Our Human Design.

Our childhood patterns.

Our triggers.

Our limiting beliefs.

Our inherited stories.

We can journal until our hand falls off.

And self-awareness matters. It really does. Because you can’t consciously change something you cannot see.

But awareness is only the beginning of transformation. It isn’t the transformation itself.

You can be beautifully, eloquently, therapeutically aware of why you repeatedly breach your own boundaries…

…and continue breaching them.

You can understand exactly why visibility frightens you…

…and remain invisible.

You can know why you struggle to ask for help…

….and continue doing everything yourself.

You can explain the origin story of your relationship with money…

…and still refuse to open the banking app.

Eventually, awareness has to become behaviour.

Because identity is reinforced by what you repeatedly show yourself to be true.

Your everyday life is creating identity evidence

One of the most interesting things about Be You Now was how many seemingly different conversations came back to identity.
Nikola Howard talked about something as simple as eating your lunch.

But underneath the woman who repeatedly doesn’t stop to eat may be an entire identity built around productivity, worth, responsibility and putting herself last.

Jenni Winter-Leach explored competitive advantage, nature and what happens when high achievement eventually collides with health.

Steff Bolton talked about organisation and boundaries, and something important emerged:

A boundary isn’t necessarily about what another person thinks is reasonable.

Answering emails late at night isn’t inherently wrong.

Working on a Sunday isn’t inherently wrong.

The question is:

Is that what you consciously choose, or have you breached your own standards so many times that you’ve started calling it normal?

That’s identity.

It’s the ordinary behaviour nobody else sees.

Visibility requires an identity shift

Our Be You Now panel explored visibility, and this is another place where the Identity Gap becomes obvious.

We often treat visibility as a marketing problem.

Which platform?

What should I post?

Should I start a podcast?

How often should I make Reels?

But underneath all of that is a much more interesting question:

Who are you willing to be seen being?

Reinvention often requires other people to see you differently.

And that can be deeply uncomfortable.

They know you as the employee.

The fitness person.

The corporate woman.

The sensible one.

The person who doesn’t make a fuss.

The person who stays behind the scenes.

Then you start showing up differently, and some people just haven’t caught up yet.

Your old identity feels far safer because it’s recognised and familiar… But if you keep waiting for everyone else to validate the new expression of you before you inhabit it, you hand other people authority over your identity.

At some point, you have to go first.

The surprising Identity Gap my own event revealed

But believe me, I’m not writing any of this from the top of a mountain having somehow successfully completed identity.

Be You Now showed me one of my own next gaps.

Receiving.

At the VIP dinner after the event, Victoria Dioh asked what I needed from the people in the room.

I genuinely couldn’t think of anything.

People started suggesting things.

They could share my work.

Introduce me to people.

Talk about The Identity EDIT.

Share me with their email lists.

Help amplify what I’d created.

And I remember thinking… Oh yeah. It genuinely hadn’t occurred to me.

I can give.

I can connect.

I can support.

I can create opportunities for other people.

I can apparently create an entire bloody event.

But ask me what other people can do for me and some part of my brain returns: ERROR 404: REQUEST NOT FOUND.

And that’s useful information, right? It’s not evidence that all my identity work has failed. It’s really not.

It’s not something I need to feel ashamed of either.

It’s purely data.

I’ve found another Identity Gap.  That’s all.

My next level isn’t only creating bigger things. It’s increasing my capacity to receive what comes back when I do.

That’s my next experiment.

Identity experiments: stop trying to change everything

This is where I think traditional self-improvement can make things unnecessarily bloody difficult. You identify a gap and immediately decide to overhaul your entire existence.

New morning routine.

New diet.

New business strategy.

New boundaries.

New wardrobe.

New pricing.

New content plan.

Meditation at 5am.

By Thursday you’re freaking exhausted and back on the sofa wondering why you’re incapable of change.

Instead, ask yourself:

What’s the biggest Identity Gap in my life right now?

Not all of them. Just the one creating the greatest ripple effect.

Then ask:

What piece of evidence could I create this week?

If you’re practising being a CEO, perhaps you delegate one thing you’ve been unnecessarily holding.

If you’re practising visibility, perhaps you pitch yourself for one opportunity.

If you’re practising boundaries, perhaps you don’t answer the message.

If you’re practising receiving, perhaps you say “thank you” when somebody compliments you without immediately explaining why you don’t deserve it.

Ahem!

If you’re practising looking after yourself, perhaps you eat the bloody lunch.

Small.

Specific.

Real.

Because every time you behave differently, you’re giving your brain new information about who you are.

Evidence matters when you wobble

And you will wobble. Of course you will. The minute you do something outside the identity you’ve rehearsed for years, part of you may immediately start shouting:

Who do you think you are?

This isn’t you.

You’re going to embarrass yourself. Make a show of yourself.

Go back to what you know.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the new behaviour is wrong though. Sometimes it just means it’s unfamiliar.

This is why I love deliberately collecting evidence.

The conversation you had.

The boundary you upheld.

The opportunity you applied for.

The compliment you actually received.

The price you quoted without apologising.

The afternoon you stopped working.

The post you published despite wanting to delete it.

The event you created before you felt ready.

When the shitty committee in your head calls an emergency board meeting, you’ve got proper receipts.

Evidence.

Stop waiting to feel like her

This is perhaps the most important distinction. You don’t necessarily need to feel like her before you behave like her.

Sometimes behaving differently is precisely how you begin to create that feeling.

That’s why confidence so often arrives after action rather than before it.

It’s why I don’t believe we need to eradicate every fear, heal every wound or silence every internal voice before we can change our lives.

Your old patterns may still speak (even shout).

Your Survival Self may still have opinions.

But the question becomes: Who gets the deciding vote?

Because your identity is not simply what you think about yourself.

It’s what you repeatedly practise.

How to start closing your Identity Gap

So forget the complete life overhaul.

Ask yourself these three questions:

1. Who do I keep saying I want to be?

Be specific.

2. Where does my current behaviour contradict that identity?

Look at your actual calendar, spending, boundaries, health, relationships, business decisions and behaviour. Not your intentions.

3. What is one piece of evidence I can create now?

Not next year.

Not once you feel ready.

Now.

That’s where identity reinvention starts.

With evidence.

The Identity EDIT: from knowing to being

This is exactly why I’ve created The Identity EDIT, my eight-week live identity reinvention programme.

Because I honestly don’t think most of us need more information about who we could theoretically be.

We need help closing the distance between:

That’s who I want to be.

and

That’s who I am.

We begin with an Identity Gap Assessment to identify the gap creating the greatest ripple effect across your life or business.

Then we work through weekly Identity Experiments, deliberately creating real-world evidence.

And we build The Evidence Room, so when the inevitable wobbles arrive, you’re not relying on positive thinking.

You’ve got tangible proof.

And this isn’t only for business. Your Identity Gap could be showing up in your leadership, health, money, relationships, boundaries, confidence, visibility or something you’ve been telling yourself you’re going to change for years.

The point isn’t to spend eight weeks learning about a new identity.

It’s to practise being you differently.

Because your future self isn’t coming.

You don’t need her to.

Be her now.

One decision.

One standard.

One behaviour.

One piece of evidence.

That’s how you close the gap. That’s how you change an identity.

And ultimately, that’s how you change a life.

You don’t find yourself. You design her.

And you don’t design her by describing her.

You design her by creating evidence.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE IDENTITY EDIT