Here’s the part that stopped me in my tracks during my conversation with Mindi Huebner: whatever you’re telling yourself, you’re winning that game. Your brain is loyal. Tell it you’re lazy, and it will dutifully collect evidence that you’re lazy. Tell it you’re the woman who shows up for herself, and it collects that instead. Either way, you win. The question is whether you want the prize.
Mindi is a subconscious rewiring and identity expansion expert for high-achieving women, and in this week’s episode of The Grown-Ass Woman’s Guide, she breaks down why so many of us feel stuck in versions of ourselves that stopped fitting years ago — and how to actually change it.
Mindset work vs. identity work (they’re not the same thing)
Mindset is the thoughts you think. Identity is the person thinking the thoughts. As Mindi put it: doing mindset work without identity work is putting lipstick on a pig. You can repeat “I’m a millionaire” all day long, but if your body doesn’t feel safe holding more than $100 in your bank account, guess who wins? Your body. Every time.
That’s why affirmations alone don’t stick. You’re not fighting a thought problem. You’re fighting a “who I believe I am” problem.
Every identity is a role with a goal
This one hit home a little bit. I’ve spent two decades as a self-proclaimed warrior mom—the advocate, the fighter, the one who handles it all. That identity served me and my family…until it didn’t. And now they’re grown enough that their faces (if not their words) are telling me to back the hell off.
Mindi’s take: identities aren’t bad. They’re roles with goals. The trouble starts when we get stuck in one after it’s done its job, or when two identities conflict—like Warrior Mama and Listener Mama doing what she calls “the identity cha-cha,” two steps forward, one step back. The goal isn’t to never have roles. It’s about being able to take them off and come back to yourself: a conscious being of choice.
If you’re stepping into a role you didn’t choose—caregiver for a parent, suddenly single, career upheaval—this applies double. You may not have chosen the season, but you get to choose who you are inside it.
Why you don’t need to reinvent yourself after 40—you need micro-votes.
Here’s the relief: changing your identity doesn’t require burning your life down. In fact, sweeping change is exactly what fails — hello, every New Year’s resolution abandoned by January 10th. Your subconscious equates the familiar with safety, and you cannot outperform your subconscious identity.
What works is what Mindi calls casting votes: micro shifts toward the next version of you — she calls her your 24-karat self. Want to be the woman who runs the race? You don’t have to run 26 miles today. But she nourishes herself. She sleeps. She strength trains. You can be her right now, one small vote at a time. The gap between you and her is not nearly as big as you think.
The three A’s for the days you fall off
Because you will fall off — none of us are our 24-karat selves all the time. Mindi’s practice: Awareness (who am I being right now?), Ownership (yep, that’s who I’m being — no shame, no guilt), and Alignment (what’s one small thing that moves me back toward who I’m becoming?). Then use her favorite phrases: from now on, in the future, next time. “I should have” gets fired.
Want to go deeper? Mindi opened spots for GAWG listeners: a 90-minute identity session built around one question — what’s actually blocking you from casting votes toward the life you want? — plus seven days of access to her afterward. I did one myself, and the tears started fast (the good kind). Details at grownasswoman.guide/mindi.
About Mindi
Mindi Huebner is a subconscious rewiring and identity expansion expert who guides high-achieving women to get out of their own way mentally and emotionally so that what they Desire with a capital D and who they are being are in alignment. She specializes in rewiring the brain to see opportunities over obstacles, fundamentally changing how her clients walk through the world.
Work with Mindi! The 24 Karat Identity Goal Getter Intensive is a 90-minute private session designed to close the gap between what you want and what you actually create. Book here.
Complete Transcript
MINDI: There is a massive difference between mindset work and identity work. While we do mindset work—because mindset is the thoughts we think, the relationship that we have with something—identity is the person thinking the thoughts. And so that is why we do identity work. That is why we get to the root in order to shift our mindset and walk into the growth mindset and do that. If we’re doing mindset work without identity work, we are putting lipstick on a pig, right? Like, we’re not changing the root. Mindset work is affirmations. I could say “I’m a millionaire” all day long—if in my body it is not safe to have more than $100 in my bank account, guess who wins?
JACKIE: Hmm.
MINDI: Body wins. My identity wins.
JACKIE (VO): Have you noticed lately how many grown-ass women are taking leaps in their lives in ways they’ve never done before? Maybe giant leaps, maybe baby steps — but they are moving forward. I have a feeling you might be included in that. I’m talking about career changes and family dynamics, or taking on new physical or mental or personal challenges. Women are moving toward lives they never really thought were possible. But behind every Instagram-perfect image is a woman who has had to face a whole lot of programming and history that has told her repeatedly that she can’t — or even more, she shouldn’t. Today, we are all about to be reminded what we’re made of, thanks to my guest, Mindi Huebner, who spends her days helping high-achieving women rewire how they think about themselves. We are about to take an honest look at the roles that have defined us, and the teeny-tiny steps we can take today to move toward the women we’re becoming.
I’m Jackie MacDougall, and this is The Grown-Ass Woman’s Guide.
JACKIE: You’re a subconscious rewiring and identity expansion expert for high-achieving women. You gotta break that down. What the hell does that mean? Tell me everything.
MINDI: Okay, so subconscious expansion — we do 95% of what we do subconsciously. It runs 95% of us, and consciously we tap into 5%. And so that means the work that I do is helping you expand who you are being subconsciously, so that those automated ways of being are actually serving you. Like tapping into the subconscious so you’re rewiring that program, as opposed to it running you, right? Like, we all know how we show up, habitually automated, right? We drive somewhere, we don’t even know how we got there. Like, oh my gosh—
JACKIE: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
MINDI: Exactly. Because this is what we do, right? We get up in the morning and make our coffee. Oh, that’s me, right? Like, we do these very regimented sorts of things and we don’t even have to think about it. Well, what we get to do is tap into your subconscious and your subconscious identity to expand it, so that what’s known and predictable and familiar isn’t just your past. We shift that into who we want to be, and we create more safety in the unknown, the unpredictable, so that we’re creating a future. So that’s the subconscious part. And then you said identity expansion, right? Subconscious rewiring, identity expansion. And so our identity is our repeated way of being-ness, and this is when that becomes a box — when we’re just… I’ll use an example for me, right? When we’re just “Mindi, a runner,” and then we get injured and we can’t run — who the hell are we? Like, it’s a problem when our identity becomes a box. When we’re hitting on, you know, all cylinders, we’re cycling through identities, and ultimately we want our identity to expand, so that I’m a runner and there’s room for a whole lot more — just in case I can’t be a runner anymore and I’m not in some existential crisis. Which actually really did happen to me, very briefly, many years ago.
JACKIE: Oh. So you just speak to that so clearly. And you’re also a mom. And I think, you know, my audience isn’t all moms, but I will say, including moms right now — grown-ass women, we’re talking over 40, 50s, maybe even older — where I think everything is shifting. The identity — I’ll speak for myself — the identity of being this, like, advocate and this, you know, warrior for my kids… and now they’re like, “You need to back the hell off.”
MINDI: Chill.
JACKIE: And so, yes, they actually don’t say “back the hell off.” Their faces say it. Their outside face, I’ll say. But no matter what this identity has been — like, some people it’s their career, and that career is shifting, the job isn’t the same, or there’s just a lot of transitions going. So this is a two-part question. Number one: how healthy is it for us to put our identity in our roles? And number two: if that’s what we did, how do we redo it?
MINDI: Yes. Brilliant. Brilliant. So first, every identity is a role with a goal. Hands down. So I’m gonna say that again: every identity is a role with a goal. The air-quotes “problem” comes in when we either get stuck in an identity — so being stuck in warrior mode when your kids are saying, “I don’t need a warrior anymore,” that’s a problem, right?
JACKIE: That’s a problem.
MINDI: The other time that it becomes a problem is when we’re in conflicting identities. And so while you know really well how to be Warrior Mama, and you wanna move into… what would we call this next iteration?
JACKIE: Listener. Gross, but yeah.
MINDI: “Gross,” she says. Okay, so you know really well how to be Warrior Mama, and you have an idea how to be Listener Mama. What’s gonna happen? Typically, these identities are gonna conflict. You’re gonna do the identity cha-cha, and you’re gonna do two steps forward, one step back kind of a thing. And it’s recognizing every identity is a role with a goal. They served you — those identities served us — until they don’t anymore, or until it’s time to de-identify and allow ourselves to come back to Jackie, Mindi, conscious being of choice. And if I need some Warrior Mama, like, I can tap into her.
JACKIE: Yep.
MINDI: Right now I’m mostly gonna tap into Listener.
JACKIE: Hmm. That’s hard. And, you know, there are people who are caregivers for their elderly parents, and they never considered themselves a caregiver. How does one shift into a new identity that maybe they need to put on for a little while?
MINDI: Okay, brilliant. So I heard you use the word “need” as well. Deep down, we all want choice — at least any woman I’ve ever encountered. Like, truly, she doesn’t want anybody to tell her, “You need to do this.” She wants to feel like she made the choice to do this, right? And so when we’re talking “need,” it’s essential, it’s vital, to embody this version of myself for this next time. Okay. Well, what would she look like? And notice I’m putting her out here, ’cause this is something that we’re… and you’re familiar with this, because we did a really fun session together, right? She’s out here, and the current version of us is right here, and there is a gap right now, ’cause we’re not her yet. There’s lots of us that is her. However, she has some new ways of being, some new thoughts, some new beliefs, some new habits that are gonna support her as she steps into a caregiver role more. And so really understanding what is in that gap — like, how to cast votes towards that, knowing this next-level version of us real intimately and granularly, so that we can shorten that gap up as we embody her. And it’s really asking — when we’re talking about hopes, dreams, schemes, the next thing that we want to attain — that’s a beautiful place to ask why. And I’m inviting you to ask why seven whys deep. “Well, why do I want this?” “Well, because I wanna support my parents. Like, this is the next role.” “Well, why? Why is having that important? And what will having that do for you? Why? Why is that gonna make a difference?” So we go seven whys deep so we can get really clear on whose goal this is and how we’re gonna show up in it. ‘Cause if it’s a, like, “This is the season I’m in and it’s happening” — okay, let’s get real intimate with this version of me so we can find the joy and the ease in being her in some way, right? Not that it’s gonna be a party, or easy.
JACKIE: Yeah. So — okay, this is how my brain works. So you’ve got two different women. One woman is leaving corporate to become an entrepreneur, and she, you know, really wants, desires, to put on this new identity, to embody this new identity. Because it’s hard when you work in corporate to be like, “I’m an entrepreneur.” You know, you feel a little bit of that imposter syndrome. Now, that’s an intentional choice.
