How Personal Style Became Part of the Performance

There is a strange moment that can happen when you realize you’ve been performing for so long, you’re not even sure where the performance ends and the real you begins. For me, that realization did not come all at once. It came slowly over the past year as I started questioning things I had accepted and normalized for a long time, including the way I was living, the work I was doing, the way I was showing up, the clothes I was wearing, and the things I thought made me valuable.

A lot of this started after my daughter came home from summer camp and told me she had committed her faith in Jesus, which led me to reaffirm my own faith in a way that changed how I was seeing everything. It felt like putting on a new pair of glasses. And once I saw my life through that new lens, I could not unsee how much of my identity had been built around achievement, excellence, praise, perfectionism, and performance.

In this episode of The Visibility Shift, I’m sharing a transformation I have not fully talked about before and what it has shown me about faith, personal style, entrepreneurship, and coming back to who I actually am. I trace where my perfectionism began, how it followed me into corporate life and business ownership, and what started to shift when I realized style had become one more place where I was trying to prove I belonged.

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2:45 – The unexpected moment from her daughter that catapulted a reaffirmation of Ellie’s faith

5:30 – How the deep discomfort of disappointing her mother drove Ellie to perfectionism and performance in search of praise

11:13 – Why Ellie’s pursuit of perfectionism and performance intensified and made things worse once she became a business owner

13:45 – How Ellie’s love of style and creativity got swept up in the need for approval, triggering her impulse to question it all

17:00 – The power of big life moments to jolt you awake and allow the truest version of you to emerge

19:07 – Questions to ask yourself during your own self-awakening transition

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Full Transcript

Ellie Steinbrink: Welcome to The Visibility Shift, the podcast where style becomes your most powerful strategy for being seen, standing out, and leading boldly. I'm Ellie Steinbrink, stylist and personal brand coach. And if you've ever thought, my style just isn't working anymore, take this as your sign. You're ready for your next level. And instead of launching into a panicked shopping spree, what you really need is a strategy. A style strategy that reflects where you're headed, not who you used to be, or who you think you need to be to fit in. Because when your style aligns with your brand and your vision, everything shifts. You lead with more presence, you attract the right opportunities and clients and you fully step into the woman you're becoming. Because showing up as yourself, that's the most strategic thing you can do. 

Now, let's get visible. Welcome back to another episode of The Visibility Shift. On this podcast, I spend a lot of my time talking about the transformations my clients experience. But today, I'm going to talk about a transformation I've experienced that I haven't fully shared yet, because this transformation is about me and it is still in process. And before I dive in, I want to give you a preview of what you can expect from today's show. I know firsthand that big transformations can shake you. Shake you to the point where you don't know which way is up or down. But I believe most real transformations contain this truth, there was a before you and an after you. And once you see a new way forward, you can't imagine going back to the way things were. And while that can feel incredibly liberating, it's also deeply disorienting. So if this is you today, in the middle of a transformation, at the beginning of a new one, or emerging from one, my hope is that we can get real about what it feels like to let go of what no longer fits. 

To get real about what it feels like to turn your world upside down and inside out. But also the beauty of coming back to yourself stronger, more alive and honest. And I want to talk about the courage it takes to get there. In fact, many of my clients' stories begin in this exact place with a transformation, some kind of an awakening, their own before and after story. And yes, style is often a part of that story, but today style is not the whole story. This is a story about unraveling who I thought I was and coming back to who I actually am. Ironically, on this 50th episode, hello, this is so exciting to me, 50th episode of this podcast, I'm sharing something I've never shared before. Something shifted in me about a year ago, almost exactly this time. My daughter came home from summer camp and told me that she had committed her faith in Jesus. I was so shocked by the news that I knew there was only one person who could move this strong-willed child and that was God. Her commitment catapulted me to reaffirm my faith in my love of Jesus as well. 

The thing about me is that I've been a Christian my whole life, from the time I left the birth canal. I went to church weekly. I was on every youth trip that was available. I prayed before dinner and at bedtime religiously every day. And then after the death of a dear friend at the age of 23, I became incredibly angry at God and slowly drifted away from my faith. Now that's a story for another day that eventually I will share. But what I want to talk about today is what happened after I recommitted my faith. This is my before and after. Because honestly, it felt like putting on a new pair of glasses. This is how I have consistently described this, over the last year. It was as if I saw the world one way before I recommitted my faith in Jesus and in a completely other way afterwards. And once I saw my life through this new lens, I couldn't unsee it. Everything started changing. It felt, honestly, kind of like an unraveling. It didn't feel very comfortable at first. It wasn't an overnight change, it wasn't a dramatic change, but it was very slow, it was quiet, and it was certainly deep. Over the course of this past year, I found myself questioning things I had completely accepted and normalized for years and years. Everything from the way I was living, to the work I was doing, to the way I was showing up and the clothes I was wearing and the things I thought made me valuable and the things that made me feel like I was enough. Even the things I wanted for my life started to just get thrown up, like tossed up in the air. 

While parts of this experience for me were really freeing, there was definitely a big feeling of disorientation and being completely uncomfortable. Because honestly, when I've spent most of my life building around identity and achievement and excellence and praise and performance, you get to a point where you really don't know who you are without it. And this led me to a pretty big and uncomfortable realization, which I was finally ready to be honest about and that is I am just so tired of performing. And honestly, I didn't realize how much of my life had quietly become wrapped up in performance. If I'm really honest, this started much earlier than when I became an entrepreneur, although I definitely saw it more strongly, once I became an entrepreneur. But it did start when I was a little girl. At my core, I was really expressive and creative and joyful. I had an outfit for every activity of the day. You will not be surprised to learn that. I made bold fashion moves like belting my pajamas. People would often tell me my smile and my joy preceded me. 

But it only took a few missteps and mistakes early on in my life, for me to realize how deeply uncomfortable I was with disappointing people. When I was 12, I made a pretty major mistake and got quite a lecture from my mom that I will truly never forget. It's been cemented in my mind. And just recently, I made the realization that at that moment, at the age of 12, I quietly, but very firmly made a decision. And that decision was, I will do whatever it takes to avoid feeling like this ever again. You know, that feeling of disappointing someone, of angering someone, of getting it wrong, of, you know, now I would label it as what I would call a failure, or just a simple mistake that you learn from. But to me, it became something so much bigger. And so my reaction was, I will become excellent. I will never be in a position where I will be criticized, or make someone disappointed. And I really believed this would protect me. So I excelled in literally everything I touched. And this isn't a Brag Heed moment. It's what happened to me, when I decided to make excellence my main protection mechanism. 

So, you know, I graduated at the very top of my class. I had perfect grades. I was the first chair trumpet all the way through college. I was a star track athlete. I wasn't just okay in everything I did. I was in literally every activity you could do. I was not just in the mediocre range, I was always at the top of winning awards, getting accolades. And the thing, there were a few things that I tried that I wasn't very naturally good at, right away. And things where I would, again, call a failure. And what did I do in those instances? Well, I quit immediately. I actually couldn't handle not being perfect and at the top with things that I tried, so I gave up. And along the way, I was getting a lot of praise. I was getting praise from family, from teachers, from leaders and this fueled that fire even more. And I think somewhere deep down, I believed as long as I could be perfect in all I did, absolutely nothing could hurt me. So when I entered the workforce, I carried this same mentality with me and it was really so subconscious. But when I look back now, I can see it so clearly. I was living for that next promotion. And I worked really hard, I put in a lot of time and effort into my work. And genuinely, that was a very authentic part of my DNA growing up on the farm. I wanted to do well. I wanted to work hard. 

But it started to get intertwined into an unhealthy place, when this achievement became so deeply tied to my identity. And while I genuinely loved my work in marketing, for quite some time, there was a voice that started to emerge, near the end of my time in marketing that said, Ellie, this actually isn't it. And you can imagine, I was terrified about what that little whisper might mean to completely start over, when this was all I worked for. So for a long time, I did not listen to that little nudging. I just kept chasing the gold star. Because doing so, got me a lot of promotions, it gave me plenty of praise. That felt really good, it validated me. Basically, it made me feel like I was doing life right. And now there is more to this story between how I jumped from my marketing career into now starting my own business. And I'll say that again for another day. But when I became an entrepreneur, even though I was doing something I was truly passionate about, this was style and expressing yourself through style, was a key part of who I was as a very little girl, before I learned any of these other ways. 

So I was really passionate about this, but this pursuit of performance and perfection was now so ingrained in me that I brought it right along with me into starting my business. And in many ways, it really intensified, when I became my own business owner and I was now the face of my brand. So now suddenly I was turning a passion and a true love of mine into a performance as well. I think it made it worse that, you know, I work in an industry, where image and success and identity are all intertwined and so like closely knit together. But I also let the messaging around entrepreneurship and what it means to be an entrepreneur influence me. And that was everything from adopting rich girl energy, or manifesting your big goals, or scaling your business, even if it meant abandoning yourself, in the process. It was also things like what it meant to look like a six or seven figure business owner. I've talked about that here on the podcast before, feeling that pressure and going into a spiral. 

But about a year ago, when I got really honest with myself, when there was that before, major before and after moment and I allowed myself to feel what was true, versus what was a proving energy, my whole body wanted to reject these messages I was falling trap to. Now, maybe some of my repulsion around this type of messaging is rooted in my own security. Okay, I know at times, I definitely fell into a trap of comparison and it triggered my own feelings of not being enough and I'm open to that possibility, but I also knew, deep down, something felt truly out of whack and misaligned for me. And I felt myself drifting further and further away from who I actually was. You know, that spark of when you start the business and then it's just like so slow and gradual that you don't even realize it's happening. And I think that was the scariest thing of it all, was how easy it is to just slowly drift into something that isn't you, or that's not aligned. All in the name of being more polished, being more impressive, chasing a certain income, being respected, or being seen as credible, in your industry. 

And as I've talked about here, even style changed for me at times, when I thought I needed to shape shift to align to the audience I was speaking to, so that I would look like one of them. I've talked openly about that here. And somewhere along the line, clothes went from a source of creativity, joy, self-expression, to the need to prove. There was pressure around it and definitely performance, which is what we've been talking about this whole time. Even shopping was tied to legitimacy, like I felt pressure to always have the latest and greatest, the thing that would be most shocking, the most impressive and the most polished. And this honestly led me into buying brands outside of my means. I wanted to feel like I belonged, like I was successful, like I belonged in the room. And again, that pure love of style and creativity and joy was just swept up in this need for approval, as being seen as enough. As wanting to fit into rooms, I wasn't even sure I wanted to be in anymore. And slowly but surely after I recommitted myself to my faith, this questioning, I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop it. It was a train I was on that I couldn't get off and it was like the rug was being removed from underneath my feet. Nothing was going to be left untouched, in terms of what I questioned. 

Let me give you an example. I was like, why do I feel the pressure to always have my nails done, when I actually have always really liked them being natural? And it's exhausting keeping up with your nails, right? And why was I doing all this effort? Or why did I feel like I needed new clothes to feel credible? Why do I all of a sudden feel not worthy, when I can't shop for new things? And is the subject of style making other women dependent on their image, instead of their worth is what I'm talking about, actually fueling the fire. Over the course of this past year, the more grounded I became in my faith, the less I wanted to rely on performance as my steady ground. And I would be lying if I said that I've stopped loving things that are beautiful, or I've stopped loving style, because I really still do love and appreciate style. I love how style can be used as self-expression and creativity. I love beautiful things and I appreciate beautiful design, whether it's a $10 shirt or a $500 shirt. But I no longer want those things to prove my worth, or be my steady foundation. I don't want to become a product. Like myself becomes a product that has to be performed and becomes hard to sustain. I don't want to curate myself into someone more palatable or impressive, because someone else says so. I want my outward life and being to reflect what's true on the outside. 

Now, you might be wondering, why am I deciding to divulge all of this to you today? Well, one of the big reasons I want to share is, I wonder if you are also exhausted by carrying an identity that no longer feels true. I wonder if you're tired of performing a version of yourself you think the world will reward, all the while you're slowly detaching from yourself on the inside, in the name of what you think will perform on the outside. And then one day, maybe like me, you just can't take it anymore. In my case, it was a faith intervention that opened my eyes. But maybe for you, it's some other life transition that has jolted you out of your comfort zone. Maybe it's divorce, maybe it's now that you're a mom, or maybe you're experiencing burnout from a job you once loved. Or maybe you got let go from a job, and now you're grappling with what's next. Maybe you've started your own business like me and entrepreneurship now has thrown you for a loop, even though it's very exciting. Maybe it's menopause, whatever it is. Maybe you're also realizing that this old identity that I have been carrying, just doesn't work anymore. 

And I think as a high performer and a perfectionist, I definitely am, this can feel like complete failure. But what I've come to realize is that these awful moments that jolt us awake, can be the most precious moments of our life. The biggest gifts we can be given, even if it doesn't feel like it at the time, it can be the thing that allows that truest version of you to reemerge. And yes, this still reaches into style, because it's at these moments, when I am often the witness to women transforming themselves in their wardrobe right alongside of it, they're intertwined. As for me, I'm not going to say that I have this all figured out. I don't have any major tips to share with you, except that I hope maybe there's just one person listening. Maybe that's you that found yourself in this story. And if that's you, I do want to share a couple of things that I've been clinging on to, in this transition, or this self-awakening. One question I have continually been asking myself is what do I really want? Because I've learned that coming back to yourself requires a whole heck of a lot of honesty And it takes a whole heck of a lot of courage as well, to be honest. And as a people pleaser and a perfectionist, this is probably the hardest thing you will ever do. So what is it that you really want? Who is the real you that wants to emerge, even if it's not what other people want? 

As you've heard through this episode, the second thing I want to share is question everything. And while that is definitely an uncomfortable exercise, it is worth it, if you're in this time of transition, where you're looking for your new steady ground. And for me, therapy really helped me in this regard to question those old beliefs and in order to discover the truer beliefs that I wanted to place my foundation on. One question as an example that I've used in this process is, what structures have I put in place that have become my stability? And I think for me, what you heard in this episode is, my stability became being the best at things, getting the gold star, being perfect, that became my stability. And then to ask yourself, what would happen to my sense of self if I didn't have those things? Would I lose my steadiness? So allow yourself to start to question things. It will not be easy. It will feel scary. It will make you feel like you're floating, but eventually you will land on solid ground. 

In closing today, I hope this episode has given someone courage to return to who you were, before the world told you who to be, or in my case, who I convinced myself I needed to be. And I genuinely love to hear from you if this episode struck a chord with you, if it cracked something open for you, or if there is a story you want to share about your own life, please tell me. I'd love to hear it. I think the more we can share and be vulnerable, the stronger we will become. And with that, thank you for listening. I hope it struck something in you and I will see you in the next episode. 

Thanks for joining me on The Visibility Shift. If something in today's episode made you pause, rethink, or gave you permission to stop playing small, it would mean so much to me if you'd leave a review at ratethispodcast.com/visibilityshift. 

Let's make it visible.