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What happens when the labels you wear start to feel tighter than the life you want to live? Host Kelly Berry sits down with Sadie Wackett - C-Suite HR executive, executive coach, and co-founder of Life Intended - to unpack identity work, self-leadership, and the mindset shifts that move women from people-pleasing to purposeful living. Together they explore why intentional living begins with awareness, how early “good girl” scripts shape our choices, and practical ways to reclaim your true self.
Stepping into the life you actually want starts with seeing the scripts you’re already following. In today’s conversation you’ll discover how to spot those hidden directions, trade habit for choice, and write a new role that feels like you - no mask required.
Sadie explains that most of us inherit our first “persona” long before we can talk. Family rules, playground politics, and workplace norms hand us a ready-made mask that keeps us safe but silent. Once you see the script, you can edit it - and choose roles that match your values.
Kelly shares how a career setback exposed the gap between her curated image and her real desires. Pausing the performance created space for messy, meaningful growth - proof that progress often looks like stepping offstage before stepping up.
Yes, but only if you redefine leadership. Sadie argues that authentic leaders set boundaries, even when it disappoints others. When you trade constant harmony for honest communication, you gain influence without losing yourself.
Best: Start with self-inquiry, small experiments, and a support system that celebrates change. Worst: Burn down your life overnight or numb the discomfort with quick fixes. Sustainable transformation comes from steady, values-aligned action.
Sadie’s mantra is clear: without awareness, only habit. Tracking your thoughts, triggers, and choices turns autopilot into opportunity. From there, every “Why did I do that?” becomes a doorway to a more intentional life.
“It’s that with awareness, there’s choice and without awareness, only habit.” — Sadie Wackett
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“Identity is not something that necessarily stays the same. It evolves.” — Sadie Wackett
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“I can’t even answer the question, like, what do I want? What do I need?” — Kelly Berry
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“We often trade off our authenticity for acceptance.” — Sadie Wackett
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“Whose script are you performing at the moment? Is it the one that was written for you or is it the one that you have written for yourself?” — Sadie Wackett
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00:00 Introduction: Why identity work matters for intentional living
02:50 Awareness vs. Habit: The foundation of self-leadership
04:00 What identity really is—and why it’s rarely chosen
07:00 The early labels we absorb and how they impact mindset
13:00 Wearing the mask: When identity creates emotional dissonance
16:00 Multiple roles, split identities, and the cost of fitting in
21:00 Self-inquiry prompts to reclaim your identity
25:00 Final reflections: Living with intention and rewriting your story
Kelly Berry (01:04)
Hi and welcome back to Life Intended. Today Sadie and I are here to share a conversation and these conversations are something that we are bringing to you in season two This is foundational to what we want to be doing with Life Intended and so what this looks like is we are going to be bringing a topic or a theme, something that we feel
is extremely relevant into how we are operating as humans. And some of these topics and themes that we are bringing, are probably subconscious. You're not really aware of them. Or if you are aware of them, you're not exactly aware of how they're influencing how you are moving through life, how you're behaving, know, expectations that you have on yourself. There's a lot of nuance here, but
I think that they're gonna be really insightful conversations, should be really fun and should lead to some aha moments or maybe even some hmm moments, just some interesting things that you may surface about yourself if you take the time to kind of like get into the conversation with us, sit with these topics, reflect on them. And Sadie always does such a beautiful job taking us through them.
giving examples, making them really easy to understand. And, you know, as always here, I think she'll give some really actionable tips, but it's optional. You know, these are things that you can become aware of. And then if you choose to, or if you'd like to make change, we'll give you some ideas and some ways to do that to help move through life maybe a little bit easier or with a little bit less friction. So, hi Sadie.
Sadie Wackett (02:53)
Kelly, how's it going? I'm doing great, thank you. And this may be one of the favorite topics of mine. Like you said, we're gonna bring topics to this group of listeners on areas that we may or may not be conscious about in our lives, but they certainly direct our experience of life, whether we...
Kelly Berry (02:54)
How are you?
Sadie Wackett (03:14)
choose them or not. And so you mentioned the word awareness. I really want to underscore that to begin with that all these topics that we're going to be raising the intention is to bring into your awareness much more of your your own internal programming and how that might be directing you in your life. There's a phrase that I love and I think it's very important to kind of share this at the outset.
It's that with awareness, there's choice and without awareness, only habit. So, you know, if you think about what life intended is about, it's about creating a much more intentional and self-directed life. And that starts with awareness. So, if you're happy, we can dive in. Yeah.
Kelly Berry (04:01)
Yeah, let's do
it.
Sadie Wackett (04:02)
All right, so as I said, we're going to be exploring something that's very personal and very individual, but also quite universal as well. It's the topic of identity. So that's essentially who we believe we are and how that shapes how we move through the world and the experience we have as we live our lives. Identity is not something that necessarily stays the same. It evolves.
is something that we inherit, we absorb. And yet it is something that if we choose to, can redefine and reclaim for ourselves as we grow. There's the classic phrase of an identity crisis. And so people often think about, when you reach midlife, you have a midlife identity crisis. Well, this can actually occur due to various different factors.
most commonly are big life changes, like whether you have a complete change of career, a change in relationship, a traumatic event, a birth, becoming a parent. These are all major events that happen in life, which can lead to kind of just a reflection or a confusion about our own purpose, our sense of self, what role we play in society, etc. So this is
This is designed to be a conversation about waking that up to ourselves and anyone who's listening. There'll be some questions that Kelly and I talked through through this and just think about those as we cover them and how that might apply to you. always do, there'll be a little bit of teaching and some conversations. So hopefully by the end of it, you'll have a much better appreciation of how this can inform and help you in your life.
So I'm going to start just by sharing a bit about how we form our identities. Obviously, when we are born as babies, we have no information. We have no concept of biases or stereotypes or judgments. These are all shaped and absorbed by us through our early socialization. So whether that's our family of origin, whether that's the society that we've grown up in, whether that's the religious institutions.
the culture, and in that way, it's very much assigned to us. It's not chosen by us. I think a few kind of quite common, as we work with women and we hear this a lot, quite common identities and labels, if you like, that we grow up with is to be a good girl, to be strong, be the achiever.
be productive, be pretty, be thin, and the list goes on. So the world teaches us through these different inputs who to be long before we learn to listen to who we are ourselves. And so if I just take a moment to think about what I was assigned with as I grew up, well, you know, I remember in one of the...
Kelly Berry (06:48)
you
Sadie Wackett (07:05)
the strongest kind of messages that I received was kind of behave, be quiet, don't upset others, keep the peace. And as that evolved and developed through my life, it looked like people pleasing. looked like even when I was in tough corporate environments, I would find it very difficult to question, to challenge, and I would want to keep the peace. And...
And as a result of that really challenged my own kind of voice and my own growth and my own potential. How about you, Kelly? What was, what do you think of some identities that were assigned to you as you were growing up? Did they come from society or your family?
Kelly Berry (07:45)
Yeah.
Yeah, I think the easy ones are probably the ones that came from family. I, and labels is a really good way to think about them too, especially when we're in this context, but you know, I was easy. So probably my family will get a chuckle of listening to this, you know, compared to my sister, I was the easy child. You know, I was obedient. I was good. I think some other labels were like,
independent, respectful, smart, know, that plays into whole life fixed mindset thing. But some of just like you're talking about, like the good, the easy, the independent led to, the people pleasing part, I'm good, I'm not here to make waves, I'm not here to like, insert
what I want over what somebody else wants, a lot of those things. so, and I think it's important to note like a lot of these labels that were given, especially in like family contexts, like they're not it's not, they aren't given with the intent that they're gonna like cause you turmoil when you become an adult. But the way that you framed it where,
these labels are informing us of who we are before we are aware of and able to tell ourselves who we are. And so I think if we can think of it more as like, well, it's not like I'm, I am that and I, that's a bad label. It's like, I'm just, I want to become more true to the labels and the identities that I want. That I choose, yeah.
Sadie Wackett (09:22)
that you choose, yeah.
And when you're aware of them, can make those choices. So it's actually, you know, the word persona, this is a fun fact.
Kelly Berry (09:28)
Mm-hmm.
Sadie Wackett (09:34)
which we now identify with personality or identity. originally came from, it meant the mask that an actor wore on stage. So the actual mask was called the persona and it wasn't the actor's true face. It was a role or a projection in a performance. So it was the performance mask that they wore. So when you think about it, that's what we're doing today. We're kind of wearing this persona.
Kelly Berry (09:53)
Mm-hmm.
Sadie Wackett (09:59)
that is a mask, but is it the mask that reflects our real face or is it a mask that somebody else gave us? And over time, like those masks become so familiar to us, we think they're like our real face, but they're not actually our true face. And I think the other thing to notice as well, we can talk a bit more about some examples, because that's helpful.
Kelly Berry (10:16)
Mm-hmm.
Sadie Wackett (10:23)
But these identities that we've taken on, they have served us. They've served us well. So, you know, in my example, I guess I was the complicated one, the more challenging one. And so my role, I guess, in sort of...
trying to keep the peace or not wanting to overstep boundaries too much, kept me safe. It kept me kind of in relationship with the people that I needed and wanted to be in relationship with. But then it can start to confine us because I realized, well, I'm not really allowed to express my real voice. So it's kept me safe and it's kept me accelerating through a career journey.
But it hasn't really been me. It's been this mask that I've been wearing. And that's when you realize that when you when something happens, whether one of those live events happens and you start to feel like the weight of this mask is becoming too heavy. That's when you can question like, how did I get this mask? And is it a mask that I want to continue to wear?
Kelly Berry (11:37)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I mean, that's all really good. I like that persona thing because I think it just makes the intangible a little more tangible. It makes you when you can think about I'm putting this on and taking it off. It feels more like something that you can make a change to rather than something that's a part of you.
Sadie Wackett (11:57)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's also you can think of it a bit like, you know, to continue this theme of the stage, think of it like a script. we, you know, we're living our lives until we can become aware of it. We're living our lives according to a script that somebody else has written, our family wrote it.
School friends wrote it when they were bullying us in the playground. Our society wrote it when they were telling us how girls need to look. Our bosses shaped it and wrote it when they were telling us how to be quiet and not to speak up. So the scripts are being handed to us. And we learned to live by those scripts because that kept us
kept us safe, kept us progressing, us kind of quote unquote successful. But when you realize there's this dissonance between what you feel, what I feel is successful and what everybody else feels is successful, that's where the rubber meets the road with this topic. And we want to start asking the questions about, what do I choose? Who am I without the mask? Who am I when I stop performing on this stage for everybody else? I know for me, I felt like I went into
Kelly Berry (13:05)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Sadie Wackett (13:15)
into work for many many many years like I had to put on a suit of armor and if I didn't go in with a suit of armor then I would be so porous that I would I wouldn't survive ⁓ and yeah I think that's that that for me when I realized that there was a a very kind of
Kelly Berry (13:30)
Mm-hmm.
Sadie Wackett (13:39)
It was a very helpful realization. And then it was very difficult for me to continue. And I did continue for a long time, but I continued in a sort of a place of like dissonance, misalignment or discomfort. And it was painful. And I can certainly stay say when I started living in to what I felt inside, when I was able to really access that and listen to that inside voice.
Kelly Berry (13:54)
Mm-hmm.
Sadie Wackett (14:06)
Life changed dramatically, dramatically. The energy I feel, felt, feel now, the compassion I have to myself and others, the view I hold of the world has very much changed. I don't know if any of that resonates with you, Kelly.
Kelly Berry (14:08)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, all of it. think, you my story, it did, I had to have like a tragedy or kind of like a moment that kind of snapped me out of the autopilot. But, you know, to look at my life and again, like, I think I would say obedient was a label, but that turned into obligation, you know, never wanting to let people down became like,
you know, woven in there with like perfectionist tendencies and high achieving tendencies, but kept me again, like you were saying, like safe, like, and, you know, for all intents and purposes, like kind of like happy, you know, it's like I was doing things that felt safe and comfortable. That was a big one for me, like being very comfortable. but
when I realized, you know, I can't even answer the question, like, what do I want? What do I need? Then it made me start looking at these things and seeing how I was making choices. Or I guess like, or not making choices, just going on autopilot. And I didn't know, like,
If I could make a choice right now, I don't even know what choice I would make. Without somebody's help or without just letting somebody else make the decision for me. Yeah, and so that's where I really had that awareness. also, and this is, I think, kind of an interesting point. My identities...
Sadie Wackett (15:39)
Yeah, we just don't know yet. ⁓
Kelly Berry (16:00)
looked very different in different contexts of my life. So there was like a professional identity, there's a personal identity, there's like an athletic identity. And in some pockets of my life, I was like acting in a way that was very true to myself, but in other pockets of my life, I was not. And it's like, couldn't, I couldn't blend these two like parallel universes, if that makes sense.
Sadie Wackett (16:30)
Yeah, it does. And I wonder if you, you know, I might ask you, was the experience of your life where you were operating, you know, in a way that you felt was very true to yourself, was your experience of life different than the experience of life in the area where you weren't?
Kelly Berry (16:46)
That's kind of deep. I'm not sure. I probably, you know, it probably had a lot to do with the amount of autonomy I felt in some areas of my life. And I think this is pretty assumptive, but I think maybe a lot of listeners might resonate with this, you know, in one of my like more recent roles that I've had, my identity as a mother.
You know, I feel like I operate in that role very much in alignment with who I am and what I want and how I want to be. But still, in some of these other silos in my life, it's not transferring. And so I think probably a lot of people, maybe that's a point of just reflection. Like, why am I able to operate in this role in a way
where I'm like tapped into myself. I know what I want. I know what's right. And in other areas, I'm not.
Sadie Wackett (17:42)
And maybe, you know, we could spend another time talking about this. It's a question of safety, where you feel safe to operate in that way. Because, you know, a lot of our conditioning as well, especially as women is if I show who I really am, will I still be accepted? Will I still be loved? And we often trade off our authenticity.
Kelly Berry (17:50)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Sadie Wackett (18:07)
for acceptance. I think in the, I don't know, I this is my experience as well, but certainly as a mother, the love is unconditional. And so I can be myself because I want there to be that non-condition. I don't want to be...
Kelly Berry (18:24)
Mm-hmm.
Sadie Wackett (18:26)
conditionally loved by my daughter or give her conditional love. And so that just is my, as we're talking through it, that's my expression of that. Yeah. So I think safety has a lot to do with it. And I think as well, you know, as we become, as we become more aware of our own identities, does, it could potentially disrupt the dynamics we have with other relationships in our lives. So,
Kelly Berry (18:30)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, that's good.
Sadie Wackett (18:55)
Somebody said, if you want to see your future, look at who your friends are now or something like that. think I've butchered that, but basically is look around you, see who you're associating with in your life and who you identify with. And it's likely that that's going to shape your future. And as we evolve in our chosen identities, can bring up...
all these senses of, you know, fear or guilt or grief, if we choose to move away from people who maybe aren't serving our true identity. And that's when we, you know, get to redefining boundaries and we are starting to speak new truths or, you know, maybe the people that only knew us with the mask that we were wearing.
don't align with us without the mask. And so I think there's a real, it can be quite an evolution as we explore our identity and what we want in terms of the, yeah, the relationships we hold around us too. Yeah.
Kelly Berry (19:50)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, that's a really good point.
you know, those are maybe as you become more aware of it, they are easy things to identify, but very hard changes to make. And so I think that's where a lot of the tension comes in and ⁓ those things can feel extremely uncomfortable, extremely challenging, take long time to make change to.
Sadie Wackett (20:18)
Yeah, that's exactly that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. ⁓
Yeah. And that's where, you know, this so-called crisis that we have, people may go and do crazy things or spend lots of money or, you know, go and enter into a relationship with another person. It's because there's a, there's a big shift and we are trying to, we're trying to wrestle with the fact that there's something going on inside of us. So we do something outside of us to try and appease that.
discomfort, try and fix the problem, but we're not going to find the answer to that problem outside, it's going to be inside. Which actually is a nice segue because, you know, we've talked a lot about identity and what it is and how it's shaped and how we can feel this dissonance between our kind of given identity and what we choose, but how do we know what
Kelly Berry (20:57)
Mm-hmm.
Sadie Wackett (21:19)
our identity is that we are searching for, we're seeking. And I think the only way we can start to unpick that and uncover that is by curiosity and inquiry. So I will just, think one really helpful tool, perhaps the most helpful tool in this is self-inquiry. So there are three questions I'll pose here for the audience.
answer and sit with and take some time, get your favorite drink, sit there in a pen and paper and just write these out. But which identities do you hold that were chosen for you? Which identities are you outgrowing? And what identity do you want to reclaim?
So I'll say those again, which identities do you currently hold that were chosen for you? Which am I uproaring? And what identity do I want to reclaim? And then I think, you know, as we think through those things, there are small but intentional steps we can take.
today, tomorrow, this week, next week, to help us move towards them. This doesn't have to be radical change. It's a journey and it's constant exploration. It's self-inquiry and it's asking ourselves the questions around, well, what do I value? Who am I when
this role. If I was allowed to make any choice tomorrow where there is no risk, what choice would I make? What values do I want to live by? Do I feel that there's part of myself that's been silenced so far? When have I felt like I really wanted to say something but didn't or couldn't?
Kelly Berry (23:00)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah. What are these thoughts that I have telling me when I'm in this situation and I'm performing in a way that really isn't in alignment? Do I stop and listen to my thoughts? Do I just let them pass? And I think, you know, listening to your thoughts and then getting really curious about them to your point, like the inquiry, it's very helpful.
Yeah.
Sadie Wackett (23:39)
I mean, it's, if anyone listened to the conversation you and I had when we were talking about restarting this podcast, one of the things that I said was this has been so far a 13 year journey for me. And that's no joke in the fact that I have been inquiring and wondering and testing and feeling all the discomfort over the last 13 years.
And I probably knew some of the changes I needed to make. In fact, I knew I needed some of the changes I needed to make in my life. I just didn't make them. And so I sat with that discomfort knowing that I was, I guess, living in an identity that didn't fit me any longer. So happy to share more about that another time. yeah, mean, that's, I think, brings us to maybe quite a...
Kelly Berry (24:23)
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Sadie Wackett (24:37)
appropriate clothes.
Kelly Berry (24:38)
Yeah, yep, I think that's perfect. Hopefully, and I'm sure that conversation is causing some reflection and some just, you know, hopefully curiosity in some people, but I do think it's one of the things if you're unaware of it, you'll start to see it a lot and start to feel it.
And we will offer this after every conversation. Sadie and are very accessible. If you want to talk about it, if you want to discuss it further, we'll always offer that to you.
Sadie Wackett (25:13)
Yeah,
I would say as well, you this is the work that we go into in a lot more depth.
in the work that we do in Life Intended, the programs, the coaching, etc. So if this is a topic that resonates and you feel kind of compelled to explore further, there are other ways to do that you can get in touch. And I think I'd leave with the, you know, the analogy of the script and just reflect on whose script are you performing at the moment? Is it the one that was written for you or is it the one that you have written for yourself? And if it
is the former, then what do you want to start writing for yourself?
Kelly Berry (25:56)
Perfect. We'll leave it at that. Thank you so much, Sadie. It a great conversation. Thanks, everyone.
Sadie Wackett (25:58)
Alright Kelly, good to see you.
Bye.
Kelly Berry is a strategic business leader and business coach. She is known for her operational excellence and her ability to drive growth and results across multiple industries.
She is also hosting her own podcast, Life Intended.
