THE REINVENTION ERA PODCAST
A podcast about identity, ambition and the gloriously messy reality of changing your life while you’re actually living it.
I’m Sarah Elizabeth, The Queen of Reinvention™ and an Identity Designer.
And every week, I sit down behind this microphone to talk about something I’ve become slightly obsessed with:
Who do we become over the course of a life, and what happens when we realise we don’t have to keep being her?
Because reinvention isn’t always about what happens after the divorce, redundancy, menopause, empty nest, burnout, breakdown or enormous life-changing moment.
Sometimes nothing has gone dramatically wrong.
Sometimes you’ve simply just changed.
What you want has changed.
What you’re willing to tolerate has changed.
The life or business you’ve built might even look pretty bloody good from the outside.
And yet, still you know there’s something else.
That’s where The Reinvention Era lives.
THIS ISN’T A PODCAST ABOUT BECOMING A “BETTER” VERSION OF YOU.
God, that sounds utterly exhausting.
Instead, it’s about understanding the woman you’ve learned to be and deciding how much of her you actually want to take with you.
We talk about the identities we inherit, the ones we create to survive, the ones that make us incredibly successful and the ones we eventually outgrow.
We talk about ambition, business, visibility, money, relationships, self-trust, ageing, leadership, confidence, success and all the weird shit that happens when you start doing things differently.
Sometimes I’ll teach.
Sometimes I’ll tell you what’s happening in my own life and business while I’m figuring it out in real time.
Sometimes I’ll bring brilliant people into the conversation.
And sometimes I will probably spend 40 minutes passionately ranting about something that occurred to me while on a walk (aka Sare’s Soapbox).
Because apparently that’s a podcast format now.
But underneath all of it is one idea:
You are not required to stay who you’ve always been.
I’M SARAH ELIZABETH.
The Queen of Reinvention™. Identity Designer. Author. Speaker. And host of this bloody thing.
My fascination with reinvention didn’t start because I spotted a promising niche on Instagram.
Rather because I’ve lived a few.
I’ve been adopted, been a teenage mum, lost both my parents before I was 31, gone through divorce, rebuilt my life, built a senior career, left that career, built businesses, changed direction, changed my mind and had life physically stop me in my tracks more than once.
And somewhere in all of that, I became fascinated by something bigger than what happens to us.
Who do we become because of it?
That’s what eventually took my work from divorce to reinvention and from reinvention into identity design.
Because the more I looked at our lives, the more convinced I became that sustainable change doesn’t begin with what we want to DO.
It begins with who we’re BEING while we’re trying to do it.
MAYBE YOU’LL RECOGNISE YOURSELF HERE.
Perhaps you too have spent years being the competent and capable one.
You’ve built the career, business, family, reputation or life you thought you wanted. Maybe even told you ‘should’ have.
You’ve become exceptionally good at getting shit done.
Yet now something is shifting.
Maybe you’re standing in the middle of a massive life change.
Or perhaps nothing dramatic has happened at all.
You just know that the woman who got you here isn’t necessarily the woman you want making every decision about what happens next.
If you’re asking questions like:
Who am I now?
What the hell do I actually want?
Why do I know what I need to do but still not bloody do it?
Is this genuinely what I want, or just what I’ve spent years believing I should want?
Who would I be if I stopped needing everybody else’s approval?
Or perhaps simply:
What now?
Pull up a chair. You’re in the right place.
WHAT WE TALK ABOUT
The Reinvention Era sits at the intersection of identity, reinvention and real life.
So there aren’t seven rigid podcast pillars because I would undoubtedly get bored and ignore them by week three (rebel identity).
But you’ll hear a lot about identity and the stories we unconsciously build about who we are. About the difference between knowing what to do and actually being the person who does it. About visibility, self-trust and ambition. About building businesses and lives that actually fit.
We talk about the Inherited Self, Survival Self, Sovereign Self and Designed Self.
We talk about why identity always wins.
We talk about changing your mind.
Starting again.
Being seen trying.
Wanting more without turning everything you already have into “not enough”.
And what it means to consciously author the next part of your life instead of automatically repeating the last one.
No pretending I’ve got life completely fucking sorted.
Just intelligent, honest conversations about becoming who you choose to be next.
WHERE TO LISTEN
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Binge the full archive on Buzzsprout
Got a guest idea or story? Contact me
START HERE
New to The Reinvention Era?
You absolutely do not need to go back to Episode 1 and listen to 150+ episodes in order. Please don’t. You’ve got a life I hope. Start with some of the conversations that best represent where the work is now.
THE HIGH-FUNCTIONING TRAP
When coping brilliantly becomes an identity of its own.
THE INHERITED SELF
How much of who you are did you actually choose?
THE SOVEREIGN SELF
Who were you before you learned who you were supposed to be?
BE HER NOW
Why waiting to become her is keeping her permanently in the future.
THE REINVENTION ERA ISN’T ONLY A PODCAST.
It’s a body of work and a conversation I want more women to be having.
About who we’ve learned to be.
About what we’ve edited out of ourselves along the way.
About the identities that helped us survive and succeed.
And about our right to consciously decide what happens next.
So listen while you’re driving.
Take me on the dog walk.
Put me in your earbuds at the gym.
Shout at me while you’re cooking dinner if you disagree.
Send an episode to the friend who needs to hear it.
But don’t listen because you need another person telling you how to live your life.
Listen because something here might make you question how you’ve been living