When Your Identity Changes, Your Life Can Change
Sep 26, 2026
I recently joined Sarah Ridge on The Sisterhood… In Session podcast, and our conversation covered a huge amount of ground. We talked about addiction, heroin, overdose and recovery. We talked about motherhood, business, money, personal development and the work I do now. On the surface, those can sound like very different subjects, but for me they are all connected by one question: who do we believe we are, and how much does that shape what becomes possible for us?
The person I was during the worst years of my addiction bears very little resemblance to the person I am today. There was a time in my life when drugs had become the organising force around almost everything. The decisions I made, the people I spent time with, the risks I took and the future I could imagine were all shaped by the life I was living then. Recovery changed far more than my behaviour. Over time, it changed my relationship with myself and what I believed my life could become.
That process has fascinated me ever since. How does somebody go from believing that their life is going in one direction to creating something completely different? What makes someone begin to see possibilities they could not see before? What changes when we stop defining ourselves solely by who we have been and begin making decisions from a different sense of who we are becoming?
Those questions eventually became part of my work. Today, I spend a lot of time thinking about the gap between knowing and doing. We can know what we want and know what action would move us forward, yet still not take it. We can know that we need to have the conversation, ask for the opportunity, raise the price, make the offer, change direction, save more, invest differently, become more visible or take a risk, and still hesitate.
That is where identity, beliefs, behaviour and decision-making become so important. Our beliefs influence what feels available to us. Our identity shapes the decisions we make. Our expectations affect what we are willing to pursue. Our past experiences can influence how much uncertainty we are prepared to tolerate and what we believe will happen if we take a chance.
This is also where money, business, personal development and human behaviour begin to overlap. Financial decisions are rarely just mathematical decisions, and business decisions are rarely just strategic decisions. There is often something sitting underneath them: a belief, an assumption, a fear, an expectation, a past experience or a story about who we are and what people like us do.
That is one of the reasons I am so interested in financial wellbeing. I think of financial wellbeing as having a sense of agency over your financial life. It is about understanding what is influencing your decisions, making those decisions more intentionally and taking the actions that move you towards the financial future you actually want.
Those decisions are not always the obvious ones. We tend to think about financial decisions as things like spending, saving, borrowing or investing, but money is woven through far more of our everyday lives than that. The way we use our time, how much we sleep, the things we postpone, the conversations we avoid, the opportunities we pursue, the risks we take and the habits we repeat can all have financial consequences.
A decision that seems insignificant in the moment can lead to another decision later in the day, and another after that. We stay up too late, feel exhausted the next day and buy food because we do not have the energy to cook. We avoid making a difficult phone call, delay dealing with something and end up paying more. We do not ask for an opportunity because we assume the answer will be no. We put something off because we do not feel ready. Those individual decisions might feel small, but they accumulate.
Eventually, they become part of the results we create.
My own life has given me a very personal relationship with that idea. I know what it is like to look at your circumstances and have very little evidence that a completely different future is possible. I also know that a person can change enormously, and when the person making the decisions changes, the decisions can begin to change too.
When enough decisions change, a life can begin to look very different.
Sarah Ridge is the founder of The Sisterhood Networking Group and host of The Sisterhood… In Session podcast. She has created a community that brings women together through networking, conversation and connection, both online and in person, and later this year she is bringing that community together again for The Sisterhood… In Session LIVE 2026.
I’m also delighted to be sponsoring The Sisterhood… In Session LIVE 2026 in November. It is a full-day event for women in business, bringing together conversation, connection and learning in person. You can find out more and buy a ticket here:
https://thesisterhoodnetworkinggroup.com/sisterhood-in-session-live-2026
That was one of the reasons I was especially pleased to join Sarah for this conversation. We talked about where I came from, how my life changed, the role personal development played in that process, my journey into business, and why I have become so interested in identity, behaviour, money and human potential.
It was a wide-ranging and very personal conversation, and I’m grateful to Sarah for creating the space for it.
You can listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts here:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-sisterhood-in-session/id1733819778
On Spotify here:
https://open.spotify.com/show/6pHc8Rrik501EHhEbu7vSv?si=4fb25ded65ef479f
Or watch it on YouTube here: