Stop Shrinking: Next-Level Identity Strategy, De-Shaming, + Stopping People-Pleasing (Journal Prompts + Activation)

Your next level isn’t a mystery, it’s a version of you that already lives inside your body, your choices, and your unspoken truth. I share what it feels like when a massive identity shift starts coming online and you realize you aren't supposed to keep playing small.

We get concrete about what “becoming her/him” actually requires. I talk about dropping a surprisingly sticky mask: the need to look a certain way to feel safe, including my decision to go to work without makeup as a self-trust practice. Then we go deeper into shame, because shame quietly runs people pleasing, fear of being seen, and the belief that other people get a vote on who you are.

You’ll also hear why your next level identity is not the same as your ultimate dream life. Leaping straight to “millionaire CEO” energy without the capacity can trigger fear and self-sabotage, so we build the bridge with belief rewiring, habit shifts, and better questions. I give you journal prompts to define what you’re ready to transform, plus mindset resets for the ways we shrink: obsessing over failure, listening to doubt voices, getting trapped by timelines, and labeling your quirks as disqualifiers. We end with a simple but powerful alignment tool.

If this lands, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What’s one part of you that’s ready to come all the way to the surface?

Transcript

Big Life Hook And Welcome

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Do you ever get the feeling that you're destined for an even bigger, bolder, more magical life? Welcome to the Conscious Glow Up. I'm your host, intuitive energy healer and coach Crystal Ward. My goal is to help you create the life you fantasize about by teaching you energetic spiritual laws of the universe and neuroscience tools. I'll share how I utilize these teachings in my own life with stories of single motherhood, entrepreneurship, finances, and relationships. Let's dive on into the depths of consciousness and glow up from the inside out. Hi, welcome back to the conscious glow up. It's me and Sadie here, my crop-eared kitty cat who is the absolute sweetest cat. She and my daughter are two of the sweetest, most precious souls I have ever known. So Sadie says hi and is buried next to me. I'm currently sitting in my bedroom during a huge storm, which is my favorite kind of weather. Unless I feel like I might die, you know. We definitely get those storms here living in a house in the mountains surrounded by oak trees. But other than that, I adore the thunder, I adore the lightning, I adore the magical strength of God, I adore the rain showers. I could listen to rain all day, but I've always wondered if I moved to Washington State if if that would change. But for now, I'm all about it. So, anyways, this episode is quite a treat, but first of all, I want to say thank you for being here. This is episode eight, and I deeply appreciate from the bottom of my heart every single download so far. And if you have been enjoying the show, then I would be more than appreciative if you rated the show and give it a follow if you want to be notified when new episodes drop. Okay, so right now is a time for me. Quite a time. If you are in the self-development or entrepreneurial space or are just working on some aspect of yourself in any way in your life, then you might know what I mean when I say this. I am at the beginning of a shift, a huge, massive shift. These are always very palpable for me. I have a big one about twice a year with at least one massive one, and I am in a massive one right now. I can see who I am becoming, but I am still in the process of becoming her, but at the same time, I am already her. We never become someone who doesn't already live inside us. The girl at the end of this particular tunnel is a fucking G, honestly. She is self-expressed beyond my current belief of what is even possible for me. She is bolder than I have ever been before. One of the things that I did at the beginning of this growth period was not wear makeup to work for over a week. No foundation, no blush, no mascara, nothing. Well, that's kind of a lie. I did wear lip gloss because it is in my jacket pocket at work, and I have a habit of reapplying it like 50 times during the shift. But something was activated in me about a month and a half ago which spurred that. One of the ways that I masked myself to the world was masking myself with makeup. So it was a really fun way to start to embody me not giving a crap of what others thought of me. But of course, nobody said anything rude about it, at least to me. And the real win is that I'm not well, I wasn't even worried if people did talk behind my back. I've worked at this restaurant for four years, officially, in two days, which is crazy to me. And they have all only ever seen full face crystals. So it was a little bit of a stretch, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. And because of something that was happening in my life, specifically at work, people at work, um, I'd realized that I had been hanging on to the belief that who I am is up for debate. Like if somebody thinks poorly of me, then they are right. At least that was what I was assuming my entire life. But I had to come to a point of a big, huge F that. Fuck that, you guys. It didn't come immediately though. I had to do a lot of inner work to get to this point. So what did I do? I wrote down 12 stories from my life that I felt ashamed of myself for. I cried, I wrote, I cried, I connected with my heart quite a bit, and I neutralized the stories. And then I flipped the meaning I'd made of myself in those times. I flipped every single negative meaning I created about myself of all twelve stories. And you know what that did for me? I connected with her, the girl that my higher self needs me to become for my next level, in particular in business through this work. The unapologetic girl, woman, friend, coworker, partner, mother, I connected with her through the parts of me in those stories who felt disgusting or horrified about myself, the embarrassed part of myself. And I sat with her deeply throughout each story and recreated every single meaning I'd made of myself in those times, meanings that I held on to since then. I saw how those moments, events, and just purely chaotic and sometimes illegal times were actually what brought up the part of my soul that is a healer. It brought that part of me up into my conscious awareness, and I saw how each of those stories was actually part of the yellow brick road of my purpose. I saw how each negative event brought me closer to who my higher self planned for me to become in this lifetime. Basically, I saw how each negative event forged a resilient warrior. I saw how each negative event made me an even better service provider for my future clients. Clients I've already had since then, clients I currently have, and the thousands of clients I will serve in the future. That was the opening to this next level. I got to connect with myself and remember that I am not up for debate. Neither are you. No matter who I was in the past or who you've been in the past, or what I've done in the past, or who you've done in the past. So now I'm in this place that I have felt before, the palpable transformation into my next level self. If you're in the healing, coaching, or self-development space, then you've definitely heard that term. And it's not a cliche buzzword term that really holds no weight. It is a real thing to aspire into, and we all have a next level, whether you are aware of it or not. For me, every next level is another unlocking to be coming the multimillion dollar CEO that is imprinted in my soul. And a next level is exactly that. A next level. They are not your ultimate level that you see for yourself. At the end of this portal I'm in, I will not be a millionaire. But that doesn't stop me. It doesn't matter. I think what stops most people from going for their next level self, their next level identity, is that they think it has to match what they want their ultimate level to be. And that can be scary. So no wonder a lot of people don't even go for it. If I woke up and had a million dollars in my bank account tomorrow and 40 clients on my roster for the week, I would shit my pants. There is no way on earth I could manage that right now. My brain would explode and you'd probably have to visit me in the psych ward. Sure, momentarily I would be excited, but then the fear would hit and subconscious programs that I have not yet rewired would surface and I would lose all of that probably within seven days. Because I am not her yet. What I said earlier is true. She is already in me. All of our desires are within us because there is a timeline where we are already having those desires, but the point of the next level is to become more and more a match to the desires. Every day becoming more and more that person. Through my belief rewiring, through changing habits that that person doesn't do, or creating habits that she does do, to creating and holding mindsets that sustain millions of dollars and tens of clients per week is how I am reaching those higher up levels. My next level identity, this portal that I am in, this identity that I feel in my nervous system, I it is such an insane thing to feel because I am not her yet, but I can feel her. I see her in my mind, I hold her in my heart. She is palpable to me because I already have the vision of not only key aspects of my ultimate self that I know I will embody when I am her, but I already, right now, today, know who I want my next level identity to be. I know how she is different from who I am or who I was when I woke up today. For one thing, she's definitely way more honest about who she is on social media and in person, and I don't mean that I'm lying about who I am, not at all. I am just not fully tapped into this deeper expression of self. I have not gone full send on my entire personality, say in social media or in person. There are parts of me inside that I know haven't quite made it up to the surface yet. So that is what I am currently striving for. I was the shyest kid in class forever. There was nobody in any class I was in who was shyer. I just it was obvious. In college, I got B's in, I was an English major, so I took a lot of literature classes, and I got Bs in those, all of those classes, every single one. Actually, no, the last year I got straight A's somehow. So I think I realized after a few years, I was like, Crystal, you gotta speak up. But I got a lot of B's when I should have gotten A's simply because I was too nervous to participate in class discussion. There would be something that I would want to say, and I remember sitting in class, and there's a few people, you know, the people who are who love sharing their opinion, and so there were a few, you know, voices you would hear constantly throughout class, and then most other people would say at least one thing in class. But, you know, I'd send my C, I would have something to say in my head, even if I thought it was really good, I would, you know, my heart would be racing and feel like vomiting. I'm like, no, I I can't. This this could kill me. That's literally how the brain processes that kind of fear is you were like, well, I might die. Anytime I had to stand in front of the class or even open my mouth to give an answer, I turned beat red up until college when I thank goodness learned tools on how to not make that happen. College, they don't call on you like in high school. They just say to themselves when grading, okay, Crystal doesn't participate in discussion, that's fine, she will just not have the best grade that I can offer. In addition, I was and still am to a small degree a massive people pleaser. That means I care more about what people think of my truth than sharing my truth. I care more about how I may be judged more than I care about having my own back when it comes to just being fully me, saying, wearing, and doing the things that my highest expression would. But it's normal because back in the day we would literally be clicked out kicked out of the clan and inevitably eaten by a huge animal if we did something to upset the norm. Our innate sense of belonging doesn't have to be that strong anymore. But it's okay, right? We all have our strengths and we all have the things that we are working on. One of my big soul lessons is feeling special, and that includes feeling special in who I am, even when other people don't agree with me, or even when people don't like me, which is inevitable for all of us. We can't be liked by everybody. There's part of the law of balance is that everything is in balance. So if I gave a speech to 50,000 people, they could have all bought a ticket to my speech, but 25,000 of them probably wouldn't like me or wouldn't like it or find a reason. You know, not everyone is gonna be your fan. Feeling special includes the belief that who I am is not up for debate. I know who my next level is because I know the parts of me that I want to grow out of, such as the worrying about what my fullest expression, how that might make someone feel. It's all about making keeping the peace, making sure that what we do doesn't ruffle feathers. We can if I can keep everybody feeling comfortable about who I am, then you know, life is easy. But that is not how we magnetize the people who are are really our people, right? I'm not magnetizing clients to me by being a boring vanilla, like keeping the peace kind of girl. So I know who my next level is because I know the parts of me that I want to grow out of, and I know which parts that I'm fully ready to shed. I'm not ready to shed everything because I don't even right now from where I'm at fully know all of those aspects of me that are gonna want to shed in the future. And I know who this next level is because of all of the work I've been doing on myself on a daily basis for the past seven years when I got into the self-development and coaching coaching spaces uh coaching spaces and all of the unconscious work I did before that. Okay, so workshop time, my favorite. How do you know who your next level is since you aren't her or him yet? Pause, go get a pen and paper, or open your phone notes. Write down these questions, and then spend some time with them when you have space to go deep within. Do it when you can really activate yourself. Usually for me, that's at night. It's 1 a.m. right now. You have your time. Make this fun and easy on yourself. Work with your body, not against it. Light a candle, plug in some mood lights, put on some trickling water sounds or meditative music. All right, ready? Ask yourself, and this is what you're writing down. What are aspects about how you show up in life that you wouldn't mind transforming? Is it letting other people's opinions dictate how you live your life? Is it fearing speaking up? Is it wearing clothes that you don't feel good in, but you think are acceptable for you know, you think nobody's going to judge you for what you're wearing? Is it having health that makes you feel tired and worn down all the time? Is it self-sacrificing in relationships? And then what do you desire to shift that would make your life feel even better? What do you desire to shift that would help make showing up around other people easier for you? Easier for you, not easier for them. What do you desire to have in your life that you don't yet have or want more of? So there is a person, there is an identity that is your next level who is being and doing the answers to these questions. Now I'm gonna give you some tips for going bigger in your life because we can't really go freaking big if we are busy shrinking ourselves. Here are some common ways humans shrink or hide. Focusing on all the reasons you can't do it. Focusing on all the reasons you'll fail. Fuck that shit. Okay, next. Focusing on all the voices, yours or other people's who tell you it's crazy or that you won't make money doing it, or it'll be hard to be really successful, or it'll take too long. Fuck that shit. Next, focusing on the timeline. You're worried that you can't create XYZ, whatever it is you that you want within a year, five years, or ten years. Who cares? You will never know how long something will actually take, and you will surely never get to the point of finding out if you never start. And because of the nature of time, the longer you wait, the longer it'll take. The most successful people just freaking go for it. So go for it. Stop holding yourself back for literally no good reason. Next, focusing on all of your qualities that you think disqualify you. Time to stretch your brain. And I'm serious, do this. How is what you think is a setback or negative quality about yourself actually a superpower? Here's an example. I could achieve gold in the Olympics for overthinking. That is not good for my relationships or my business. I can easily spin out on literally nothing for days, sometimes weeks. I've done it plenty of times. So I had to learn how to navigate that, and now I have my own great ways of doing that that have transformed my whole damn life. So I could think, well, I overthink too much, which means I'll never make progress. But when I challenged myself to see how overthinking is a superpower, I was able to see that it's actually a sign of brilliance because my mind can come up with so many ways of seeing one single thing. And you know how that is fantastic for business? I can problem solve like a wizard. Write down your top three qualities that you don't like or think disqualify you, and stretch your brain to see how each of those is actually super cool. Learn how to navigate the perceived negative of each quality and then use the positive flip you make and focus on that instead. And I want to let you in on a little secret. You are a fucking badass. No matter how you feel about yourself today, there is a badass who lives within you, and that is a big part of your next level. This work is meant to connect you with that version of yourself. Spend time visualizing that person, communicate with him or her, invite them in, merge yourself energetically today with them. Start making decisions in your life from that person's point of view. Would my million-dollar self make this decision? Would my super energized, vibrant body eat this food? Yes or no? That's a great way to start becoming that person. You can do it now. Your soul is designed to do something entirely different and unique in this lifetime for the world. So, because it's you, that includes all of the qualities of who you were when you were born, and includes every next level identity you create for yourself. Most, actually, sorry, all of our obstacles and things that we think are setbacks or disqualifiers, those are actually all the lessons that we need to grow through in order to become that ultimate version of self. And I don't think there's really there's not one ultimate version, right? 90-year-olds are continuously transforming because we're constantly life is constantly shifting for us. So when I say ultimate, I just mean like that top, top, top big desire you have for your life and for your identity. You guys, you can really have what you want. You just have to go for it, and you can do what you want in this lifetime. You just have to accept the badass in you, and with each next level, watch for yourself the insane progress your identity makes. Do this work, and I bet you feel your own palpable shift start to emerge from within you and experience the magic. I see you so big, and I love you so much.