Identity Shapes Your Destiny | DFS 401

Welcome to Destin for Success. I'm your

host, Jennifer Takagi, your 12 minute success coach. Today, I

want to talk about identity. If you caught last week's episode,

I talked about it a little bit, I touched on it, and today I

want to dive deeper into identity, because your identity

drives your behavior, people often try to change their

actions without changing the way they see themselves, and if you

still identify as overwhelmed, unsuccessful, unworthy, or

someone who never finishes, I talked about that last week,

your actions will continue to match that identity. Lasting

change starts with identity first. I struggled to quit

smoking for years and years and years and years, and then for a

few years, and my husband smoked. He still smokes, and

there's one little convenience store that he always wanted me

to go to, and I didn't really like going to, it was off the

beaten path, but okay, so one day I went to fill my carp with

gas and buy a carton of cigarettes, and I went in, and I

was like, "Hey, I'm Bill's wife, Jennifer, and he goes, "Oh, hi

Jennifer, how are you? How can I help you? and I said, well, I

filled my car up on that pump, I want to pay for that, and I need

a carton of cigarettes. And he looked at me, and he goes, "Wow,

you don't look like someone who smokes. And I said, "Oh, I lied,

I flat out lied, ladies and gentlemen, I lied. I said, "Oh,

they're for my husband, and he goes, "Oh, well, that makes

sense. I knew Bill smoked, but it was a thing because somebody

actually saw me for someone I wasn't. They didn't know I

smoked, so shortly thereafter I actually did take steps and quit

smoking completely, and I had quit the first week of March

2007 I believe it was, and a friend of my seven was said

about smoking, and a friend of mine's mom goes, look, you don't

smoke, did you smoke? And I said, oh my gosh, I just quit

three months ago, six months ago, it hadn't been very long,

and I said nobody even noticed, and so we were at the lake, and

what were often hanging out on their dock, and she goes, well,

you always stepped away when you smoked, so I didn't really see

you smoking, so I didn't see you as a smoker. Wow, okay. I made

that identity shift to a non smoker pretty easily, pretty

easily. So, what identity do you want to embody? I've been doing

workshops recently on writing a book. What's the one topic that

you know a lot about that you could really write a book about?

And let's get that honed in. And the first thing is identity. Do

you see yourself as a writer when you go to your LinkedIn

profile, do you want to put best-selling author? Do you see

yourself as an author? When I uploaded my first short book,

because all I write are short books, is I ain't nobody got

time for a long book. When I was ready to upload first book, a

friend had been helping me, and we were following a course. We

were in a program together, and we, I had followed all the

steps, and now I have this book, and I'm ready to have it. At the

time, it was a big deal to have it as a lead magnet, and this

friend that had been helping me with that said just upload it to

Amazon, and I was like, oh, I can't do that, and she said, Why

not? And I said, because I'm not an author, I'm not a writer, and

she said, You literally wrote the book. Oh, I said, but my

brother was the oldest, and he was a writer, and my sister,

just older than I am, she's a really good writer, and I'm not

a writer, and she goes, "You just wrote the book, I uploaded

to Amazon, and it did become the Kindle version, a bestseller in

three categories, and I'm adamant about Kindle books,

because I'm not going to read a regular book. I have books all

over my office. I typically don't read them. I go find the

Kindle version, because I like reading on a Kindle. I don't

want to, I don't want a book, I don't want to carry a book, and

they're heavy, and I don't want to deal with that. I had to

shift my identity. From the sister who isn't an author who

isn't a writer to being I am the sister, the woman, the wife, the

daughter who's a writer I am, so when you start then acting as

the person who is the author who finishes what she starts, you

start acting in accordance with that identity, your confidence,

your success, your health, your leadership, your abundance.

Those are no longer just goals, they become natural when they're

your identity, when your identity shifts, and the

question becomes, What version of me do I need to be to do the

thing? How do I need to show up? Who do I need to be when I have

somebody reflect back to me how I show up in a room or how I

impact people, and it is fully in alignment with what I had in

the back of my mind of how I wanted to show up, I am

thrilled. I'm thrilled. I want to be a podcaster, and I want to

be a good podcaster. I maintain the top 5% globally with this

podcast, that's out of three point, I think it's 6 million

podcasts. I'm in the top 5% globally. I want to be a good

podcaster. I want to share valuable information. I had a

gal that I knew that was the bartender. I go to one bar, Toby

Keys, before every Oklahoma City Thunder basketball game, and so

we get to know all the bartenders, right, because they

have a handful, and they rotate through, and they're like 40

some odd home games plus playoffs, and one of the

bartenders had left. She didn't work there anymore, but she was

back for an event, and she got ready to leave, and she saw me

at the bar, and she came up, and she goes, "Jennifer, I just want

you to know, I listen to your podcast every week, it's

amazing. I was like, oh my god. Thank you so much. You never

know who's listening. Somebody's listening, because I've had over

33,000 unique downloads, and I'm top 5% globally. So I

intentionally want to show up as a podcaster. I intentionally

want to show up and provide some value every episode, whether

it's an interview or it's a solo episode of me. I want you to

walk away with something that you can start incorporating

right now. Do better, be better, be seen as a better person. If

we're not growing, we're dying. Our identity can be rewritten

intentionally. Our past experiences may have shaped our

identity, but they don't have to define it forever. We can be

aware of our behavior, we can be aware of how people see us, we

can be intentional with our thoughts. We can have emotional

healing again. I'm an energy healer. Who knew? Who knew I

would end up becoming an energy healer? But I am, and it's

amazing, and it brings me great joy, and if I'm consistent with

my actions and you're consistent with your actions, we can create

identities that support the life we truly want to have. My dad

told me one time that he was in an economics class when he was

in college, and he went back to college after he had done a

stint in the air force and was married with two kids when he

went back to college, and he worked full time and went to

school at night, and one of his professors said, you have a set

limit in your head of how much a house can cost or what you're

willing to pay in rent, and if you pay more than that, you're

going to be uncomfortable living there. You're going to be

uncomfortable living there. I had a set limit of how much I

was willing to spend on a house, and my husband and I bought a

house that was $25,000 more, and let me tell you, I loved, loved,

loved that house, but there was a level of discomfort being

there, because it was outside my comfort zone, and just staying

there longer didn't help it, so what did we do, we sold that

house, we made a killing. Bought another house, put a huge down

payment on it, and our house payment plummeted because

neither one of us liked that house payment. It wasn't our

identity. We didn't want that. That didn't fit our life or our

lifestyle. What is my identity? I'm Jennifer Takagi, your 12

minute success coach. I am a wife, I am a sister, I am an

aunt, I'm a great aunt. I've got lots of great nieces and

nephews. I have a dog, I have a cat, and I have a lake house.

And someone said, man, you need to talk about your lake house

more often. People might want to do that and have a lake house

too. Well, maybe they do, maybe they don't, but it's my

lifestyle. My husband and I bought it. Oh my gosh, over 20

years ago. Oh my gosh, I don't even know what year we bought

it. Anyway, over 20 years ago, our whole circle of friends have

places at the lake, so when we go, it's like a party every

weekend. Well, it is a party. It's not like it is a party

every weekend. Some of these people I have known. Oh my gosh,

I want to say more than 40 years. I can't believe I'm that

old. I can't believe I'm old enough to be saying that. And

that's our lifestyle. We go like every weekend. That's what we

do. I'm a person who goes to Spain for a month every year.

This year, 2026 is going to be my third year going with my

girlfriend, bestie Kimberly Crow. My husband doesn't want to

go, he gets to stay home, he doesn't have to come, he's never

been invited for the whole month, only for a week. He still

don't want to come. We just go and immerse ourselves in the

city, and what's going on there. That's what we do. You might see

pictures every now and then on social media of us being there.

That's my identity. That's who I want to be. We were staying at a

hotel. We went on a little trip with a group of friends for a

birthday party, and a group of people, they were Mexican, and

they lived in West Texas, and we got to talking, and I just

plopped my happy butt right in the middle of their family

party, and I started speaking Spanish. Am I good? No. What do

I tell people? Oh, I speak perfect Spanish. Kimberly and I

were in Spain for the very first time. We had been there not

quite a week, and we're sitting there at the end of the day, and

we're talking about, you know, we've just been there a week,

blah blah blah. And she says, What is your favorite part about

being here? And I sat there a minute, and I mean, I really

gave it some thought, and I said that I speak Spanish perfectly,

and she goes, "Oh my gosh, you do not, you do not speak Spanish

perfectly, and I said, "No, but I get whatever I want. I walk in

and I say, "Hola, Joe Quiro una cosa pero no se la palabra. What

that is, is hello, I need the thing, but I don't know the

word, and I stumble with that, and I repeat it a few times, and

then finally I say the word in English, and they know what I

want, but they know I tried really hard, so I'm talking to

this family, and I'm spitting out my Spanish, alcohol might

have been involved, I might have had a few beers, I had been at a

ball game and and then I would stop and speak English, and the

next morning my husband really had never seen me do that before

in 34 years of marriage, and he said, "Wow, that Mexican family

was so impressed with you, that your Spanish was so good, and I

started laughing, and my pronunciation is good. I have

studied Spanish and French a lot. My Spanish pronunciation is

much better than my French pronunciation, but I've studied

a lot. I have a degree in French and Spanish. I said, Do you know

what the funniest thing is about that? He goes, What? And I said,

I probably only used 20 words, maybe 30, and he goes, 'Are you

kidding me? And I said, 'No, I just kept saying the same

things, and they thought it was hilarious, because I was trying

to speak Spanish. I wasn't trying to was speaking Spanish,

I just wasn't saying anything profound. But that's my

identity. I am the girl who walks in a room and announces to

everybody that I speak perfect Spanish, even though I don't,

but that's what I say, and I own it. I own it, and the people who

do speak Spanish perfectly, they love it, and they think it's

hilarious. Can that be your identity? Well, only if you want

it to be, only if you want it to be, but it doesn't have to be.

You get to choose what your identity is, how you show up in

the world, and how you show up does not have to be how I show

up. You get to choose how you want to show up in the world. So

I want to challenge you to sit down. And I want you to write

out who you want to start becoming and become that newer,

better version of yourself. People will begin to notice. I'm

Jennifer Takagi, your 12 minute success coach, and I look

forward to connecting with you soon.