Welcome And Why Identity Matters

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Welcome back to Healthy Mind, Healthy Life. I'm your host, Yusuf, and this is the show where we have the conversations that are real, full, often invisible, lives actually meet. My guest today tonight is Latonia Renier, a licensed life coach, author, and faith-driven entrepreneur whose work helps women who are successful on paper but exhausted in private. Latonia speaks from lived experience. She was the stronger, the helper, the supporter, until she realized her exhaustion was not coming from doing too much. It was coming from losing touch with who she was becoming. Tonight we're talking about something so many women carry, but really name the identity problem hiding underneath the burner and what it actually takes to come home to yourself. With that, welcome my guest Latonia to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Oh, thank you so much for that wonderful introduction. It's such an honor to be able to come on this platform and chat with you.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Thank you so much.

The Moment She Started Shrinking

SPEAKER_02 1:25

So before we get into all of it, I want to start somewhere honest. So when you look back at your ears leading a city, what is the difference that right now you can see, but the past version of yourself could not see, and that might have helped her.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Yeah, so that that's a very easy place to start, honestly. The thing that I can see now that my past self couldn't see was the truth about who I am. Um I uh I talk about this in my book. When I was in fifth grade, um a group of my friends wanted to fight me because they said that they thought I was all of that. And ever since that day, I literally started shrinking. I started showing up in my rooms and inside of rooms not fully of who I am, because I thought if I show up, and this is all subconsciously now. I thought that if I showed up being fully myself, being bold, being confident, being having my big personality, people in the room would shut down, they would misinterpret um what I'm doing, they would they would talk about me, they would feel uncomfortable. So then I stopped. I literally stopped showing up as myself and I got lost along the way and I forgot who I am. But since I've been awoken, um seeing myself and who I am today and fully embracing that is a place that I could not have come to if I wasn't healed. So I didn't see myself before, I didn't see the person that God created.

Why High Achievers Feel A Void

SPEAKER_02 3:06

And why is that so many high-achieving women, women who you know, on the outside seems like they have all figured it out, but inside they are missing. Inside, you know, there's this void that they seem it seems that they cannot fill. Why is that so much of a hassle for women right now?

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Honestly, because of the same reason they don't see themselves the way that they were created. They're not fully embracing who they are, they're just busy checking off to-do lists and items and tasks that has been assigned to them by family members, the church, their jobs, and they're working so hard to show up and to prove to everyone, like, hey, I can do this, I can do this. But just because you can do something doesn't mean that that's where you're supposed to put all your energy. Because when you put energy in doing a bunch of things just for the sake of checking it off the list, then you get you get depressed, you get depleted because you're not doing anything that gives you energy back. You're not really doing things that bring you joy because you have gotten so lost in serving everybody else and wearing, you know, as women, we have multiple hats. Most of us are not just um moms, we're also wives, we're also entrepreneurs, we also have jobs, we also function at church and we're constantly being pulled. And sometimes I even have to check and stop and say, oh my gosh, which hat am I wearing right now? So we get lost. Um high achieving women, they do a lot and they don't have they're not afraid of the work, but we get so buried under a bunch of work that's not speaking to our identity. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:00

You know, because for them, rest itself starts to feel like failure, and then the immediate system has already been internalized. I think that is also a very big problem for the people.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Absolutely. You they be we be I I'm not gonna say they, I'm gonna say we because I was a part of that. I'm still a part of that. It's still a struggle every day to remind myself of the truth because the world, um, our flesh all constantly just lying, lying, lying. So it is it's easy to get stuck behind the lie. So that's why I said we. But yeah, if you're constantly giving and pouring and your life doesn't match what you really want to do, because most high-achieving women, they have visions, they they have goals, but they're too afraid for whatever reason to go after that because they're buried with the other stuff. So at the end of the day, when they get home, even if they're making sick figures, even if they help the church do what they need to do, because they're not getting that energy back, because they're not feeling joy. They come home feeling depleted, overwhelmed, tired, and sometimes even depression. So yeah, it does, it does mimic failure because you're thinking, like, man, you know, um I see so much more for myself, but I'm not there yet. So it feels, it feels like failure. And for the most part, if you feel like you're failing, and if you have accepted the fact that you are failing, it's really hard to get out of that. You just get bombarded with more um depressions and more lies.

Where The Pattern Really Begins

SPEAKER_02 6:48

And that that brings me to this like, where do you think this pattern begins? Like, child is it childhood conditioning, cultural expectations, or maybe personal ambition?

SPEAKER_01 7:04

For me personally, most of my lies originated when I was a lot younger. Like I mentioned earlier, that was a fifth grade experience. But that was over 20. I'm telling my age now, that was over 20 years ago that I was still functioning from that lie. So, yes, a lot of it happens in childhood. But that doesn't mean that all the lies are in childhood, but for me personally, that's where it started. And then over time, because you condition yourself to believe it, subconsciously, you start living out your life based on lies, based on what other people have put on you, based upon what you have believed about yourself, but it's not it's not true. So we we have to literally do the work.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

Where do you think this pattern begins? And I my question was something that it is very powerful, or it becomes precisely powerful because you know it's a combination of all the three aspects that we talked about, like childhood conditioning, cultural expectation, and personal ambition. And I think that makes it harder to even recognize it.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Oh, most definitely. It makes it extremely hard to recognize. And for me, I felt like I honestly felt like I was isolated. I didn't realize that there were several, I mean, thousands, if not millions, of other people, especially women, that have these same type of feelings. Because if if we have a successful career, if we're running our homes and you know, on the outside everything looks great, then why should we go somewhere and complain? Because society believes you you got the house, you got the car, you got the husband, you got the job, therefore you should be grateful. Um, and not that you aren't grateful, it's just that you feel depleted, you feel empty, you don't feel fulfilled because you're not fully aligned um with your identity. You don't you don't see yourself the way that God sees you, you're not fully utilized the gifts that God gave you. So it's very hard to see that.

SPEAKER_02 9:19

Right.

Renewing The Mind Through Faith

SPEAKER_02 9:20

And and when something is that deeply layered, it is not something you can fix with surface level solutions like take a break, set boundaries. It requires rethinking identity itself, which is much more uncomfortable and much more complex.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Absolutely. It starts with renewing of the mind. We have to take the time to do the work, to sit. You know, I believe in God. So yeah, I I had I literally had to sit with God and ask him. Well, not even ask him, I just told him how I felt. Um, and while I was telling him how I was feeling, he was reminding me of some scriptures that I didn't even know that I realized that I that I knew. And those scriptures helped me see the truth about who I am and allowed me to see me through his lens, and then everything became a lot clearer. A lot clear. Yeah.

The Addiction To Being Needed

SPEAKER_02 10:20

And do you think being needed becomes addictive for high-achieving women?

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Well, yeah. Um, everyone wants to feel appreciated in some way. You know, I was talking to my friend the other day. It's literally engraved in us. Uh, when you start walking, you got everybody clapping, cheering on. Oh, yeah, you did something great. Go ahead. So, like for the rest of our lives, it could, it could come off very performative. Um, when I wrote a book, I'm like, hey guys, I wrote a book. Obviously, um I did it because God told me to, but some part of me wanted people to be like, good job, Tanya, you did it, you know. Um so, so yeah, you could get addicted to the Ada girls and the atta boys, and you could get addicted, like, hey, they needed me at church, you know, when no one showed up, they knew they can count on me. But again, if you're going to church, and I'm not picking on church, that's just one of the things that I'm thinking about. If you're going to church because they ask you to serve, but it's completely outside of your identity, then it's okay to be like, you know what? That's not for me. But if you ever have, you know, A, B, or C, please let me know. I'll be more than willing to help in that capacity. So we do definitely have to set boundaries, but you can only start setting boundaries after you understand your identity. Because if you start setting boundaries prior to recognize your identities, those boundaries are like false. They don't help with anything and it won't serve you at all.

SPEAKER_02 12:01

That is true. And and if it does, like if it is addictive for the woman to being needed, what are they actually afraid will happen if they stop being needed?

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Oh, that's that's good. You're gonna make me ponder a little bit, Yourself. Let me let me think. Let me think, let me think about myself. If if I come to a place where I feel like I'm not needed, how would that make me feel? I think the old me would feel depressed. The old me would feel like, man, is there something wrong with me? Um, the old me was second guess, like everything that I say something, that I do something to offend. But in the new lens, I'm coming to a place where I'm not for everybody. Everybody should not need me. The only people that need me is the people that I was called to serve. And again, that goes back to identity. If you know who you are and how the gifts that you have, then it's easier to know who you're supposed to serve. And at the end of the day, if someone doesn't accept who you are fully, that's okay. It might just be too much for them in the moment. They might not be at a level of their identity yet to be able to receive you, but that shouldn't shake you. You shouldn't change um for for for approval.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

Yeah. That I got a question.

Burnout Rewards And Being Used

SPEAKER_02 13:36

Uh uh, do you think high achieving women are rewarded for burnout? Like at least in the short term?

SPEAKER_01 13:45

Do I think they're rewarded for burnout?

SPEAKER_02 13:48

Yeah, in the short term.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

I um hmm. It depends. I mean, so in some ways, like uh if if there's a woman that's like, okay, I have this goal, I want to help my family, so I'm gonna work as hard as I can to get the contracts I need. I landed the six-figure contract, therefore that we can get the house that we want. We could put the kids in private school, we could do this, we could do that, we could do this, we could do that. In some way, yes, they're feeling like they're being rewarded because they're they're setting them their families up for a position to have the resources to do the things that they want to do. However, long term, that is not gonna be sustainable. Like, especially for people who, you know, who look like me, black women are more prone to so much um health um issues like heart attack, stroke, diabetes, and that all goes it goes the line of identity because there's not just black women, women in general, we just that we suffer a little bit more statistically. But you know, if we're not happy, we're gonna start doing things that's not okay. We're gonna start eating foods that we shouldn't eat. Um, we're gonna start isolating ourselves because even if we're being rewarded in the short term, like you said, long term, that's not gonna be sustainable.

SPEAKER_02 15:11

Yeah, that is that is true. And you know, that that is the paradox, right? The very behaviors that lead to burnout are often the ones that that gets validated, which makes burnout less of a personal failure and more of a predictable outcome of what gets rewarded.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

Yeah, that that I couldn't have said that later.

SPEAKER_02 15:39

And is there a difference between being valued and being used? And do people always recognize that difference?

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Ooh, man, you and your questions, Yusuf, you bringing it, man. Difference between being used and being valued. Yes, there is a huge difference. Um, and for the most part, in my experience, a lot of people are being used and not valued. Is it always easy to recognize the difference? Not when you're in it. When you're in it, you really think you're showing up to help. You're like, oh my God, they need my help. I'm gonna go help them. But in long term, you're waiting like, wait a minute, they're not, they're not valuing me, especially when you start to walk into your identities and you start setting those boundaries. And when you say, you know, hey, no, I can't do that today, or hey, give me to Wednesday, if you're getting a lot of pushback and a lot of attitude, at that moment you'll be able to recognize, man, they weren't valuing me that whole time they were just using me. So it's hard to see it when you're in it, but there is a clear distinction between the two. But again, you won't recognize it until you understand your identity.

SPEAKER_02 16:59

Yes.

How To Connect And Final Blessing

SPEAKER_02 17:02

Latanya, for people who want to connect with you or just want to learn more about your work, where can they do that?

SPEAKER_01 17:08

Oh, absolutely. Thank you so much for asking. So, my website is the easiest place to go, and it's just my name, www.latanyareneflood.com. My book, I find my light now go find yours, is also available on my website. But for those who just want to go straight to Amazon, you just gotta type in I Find My Light Now Go Find Yours. And they'll find it.

SPEAKER_02 17:32

Perfect. Yes. For everyone listening, all these links are in the show notes, so just go and check those out.

unknown 17:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 17:43

Is there any last message that you want to leave us with?

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Yes, actually, I do. Um, for anyone that's listening right now, I want you to know one very important thing. Um you have purpose, and you are the only person in the entire world that was created just like you with your set of characteristics, with your set of gifts. So choose, choose to embrace it. Trust who you are and allow that light to shine through you so bright that the people that you are called to serve will see you, they will find you, they will know that you're there.

SPEAKER_02 18:25

Thank you so much, Latanya, for the depth, the honesty, and the grace you brought into this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Thank you again so much for having me. It was a pleasure.

SPEAKER_02 18:39

And to the woman listening right now, maybe in the kitchen after everyone else has gone to bed, maybe in the car after a long day, maybe lying awake wondering what she got so far from herself. I want you to realize you're not behind, you're not too late, you're not feeling or feeling tired. You're simply being asked Gently to come back to yourself. And there is grace for you when you do. This is healthy mind, healthy life. I am yourself. Take care of your mind, take care of your life. And I'll see you in the next one.