S1 Ep1 - Introducing the Rebrand Revolution
Sidonie introduces the Rebrand Revolution and asks us what if it is our own language and labels that is preventing us from becoming the best version of ourselves? She invites us to join her weekly as she calls out some of the pop-culture-psychology and leadership cliches that are holding us back and bring about big change in our minds and our lives.
Sidonie gives us some background on her history with words, meaning, and power, and unpacks some of the milestones in her evolving relationship with language and possibility.
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This podcast is recorded on Kaurna Country. We acknowledge and pay our respects to the Kaurna people as the traditional owners and custodians of this land.
I'm Sidonie Henbest, and you are listening to Rebrand Revolution, a podcast where we take today's pop culture cliche and turn it into tomorrow's empowered call to action. I've always had what they call a multi hyphen life and career, and it has involved a blend of music, performing and business, and it's something that I've loved to be able to do. And no matter what the job has been, whether it's standing on a stage touring shows around the the outback of Australia, or sitting around a boardroom table, creating powerful relationships and alliances and building great brands, my career has always revolved around storytelling and the meaning and the power in the language we use. I still love to make music, and get to do it as often as I can, and I definitely still get overly excited about good and bad branding. But these days, I have moved in a different direction, and I am so honored to be able to help a new generation of leaders and change makers connect with their unique story, find their purpose and expand their vision. So while my day job may have changed, it's still deeply rooted in language, meaning and perspective. So that's the reason for this podcast. Join me as I pitch you a complete rebrand on some of the the terminology that I think is really holding us back, whether it's reels, stories, posts or other ways this gets into your life. Every day. I'm talking about the pop psychology, self development and leadership terminology that I think is giving women the wrong steer. I think it's holding us back. So whether you love to hate or love to love these terms, I'm inviting you to take back their power. Let's rebrand the revolution. My name's Sidonie Henbest, and I'm your host, and this is episode one of Rebrand Revolution. I'm delighted to be here, and I'm really delighted to have you here listening. Thank you.
This episode's going to be a little bit different than the ones that come after it, really, because I want to give you a little bit of background about why, why we're here doing this, what I want to do, and hope that you get as excited about it as I do. If not, I'll just get excited here by myself. It's okay. I...it wouldn't be the first time. I have harbored a lifelong fascination with words and meaning, and recently have added to that an understanding of the ability for us to empower ourselves through language, both in the words we use and in the way we let other people use words as well. Really, since the beginning of critical thought, you know, whether they're philosophers, linguists, scientists, you name it, people have been wondering about and questioning the relationship between language, the way we use it, and the way we perceive the world around us. And whilst there are many, many schools of thought and many, in fact, contradictory theories about this sort of thing, it would seem that the general consensus is on some level, words really do have the power to shape our reality, which is cool, right? Here's the other thing, words also evolve their meaning over time. So a word can mean one thing when it first appears in common use and over time it changes. All you have to do is look at some of the words that teenagers are using these days to know that the words do not mean what they meant even 15 or 20 years ago. Starting to show my age already! But the idea that language is so profoundly affected, both in its use and its meaning by the context and the application, in other words, who's using it, when, how and why, and that that meaning changes by the hour, by the moment, and that means that this is a really interesting opportunity for us, right? The change is happening around us all of the time, and therefore we can be part of the change.
So before you wonder what on earth you've stepped into here, I promise you there won't be any more history lessons. That's as much as anyone's mentioning history. But I do want it to be an invitation for you to join me and get curious, to get curious about words and meaning and why, why we let things define us the way we do. So you've probably gathered already that I am bit of a word nerd. I love words. I love language a lot, and I think I've known, really my whole life that words mattered. And that language was something really interesting to be played with. And look, I definitely had some encouragement at home at people who loved words and loved books and read to me a lot as a child, and all of those lovely, invigorating and eye opening things. I've certainly got a thing for words, and moreover, I'm a little bit obsessed with the etymology of language, the derivation of words, where they come from, how they evolve, their history, their meaning, the whole evolutionary piece. But before I bore you all to death, let's go modern. Let's look at contemporary context. So how did I come to realize that words matter more than just in a strictly communicative sense, but in a ability to influence and empower, to, you know, potentially disempower, but to affect the world around us and to affect people. Certainly, I learned a great deal about that when I studied a performing degree as a musician, as a singer specifically, and started to really apply craft to the telling of story. Who I, as I mentioned in the introduction, have had the privilege of working both in the performing arts and also in business, in a variety of roles. I think I first really started to notice how language was a really useful thing for us to understand and to be able to use in a measured and appropriate way when I got involved in the relationship management side of things for a tech company, one of my first big jobs in London, many years ago, the story about how I ended up working in a tech startup in London is a story for another day and another podcast. But suffice to say, it's amazing what you can do with a degree in music. Anyway. So there I was in London, having to explain quite complex technical stuff to people, and I discovered through that process, that my words were my best tool. You know, my ability to explain a complex thing in a way that actually made it feel easy to understand was so important for clients. I ended up in a strategic relationship management role within that organization, and specifically acting as an interface between the people actually developing software and the clients who often had really complex, risky situations involving the speed of, you know, of systems and lots and lots of money, many, many, many, many zeros here.
As the person interfacing that, I very quickly learnt that the way I communicated with people and the trust that I could build in that communication was critical. So this was how I started to see how language was a really important tool, and that the mindful use of it really mattered as well. Fast forward a little bit, and you'll find me deciding that that was enough time working in tech, although it was quite good, long period of time. It was about eight years, all up I think. I ended up back in the hybrid world of performing/producing and also brand and business development. And here, yet again, appears language, and we see how words start to show themselves, whether it's the ability to craft compelling communiques about complex subjects, or to help shepherd communications and expectations through things like the global pandemic that occurred. All of this really showed me how important language was, but also the intention behind it, when I moved out of marketing and business development and came across into the coaching and empowerment space, I started to see language in a whole new world and new way yet again, and this really became now about the difference between internal language, the words and the ideas that we use for ourselves and our sense of possibility and place in the world, and also the way we allow language to be used around us. And I also started to see just how instantaneously a situation can be altered by the use of different words.
So I've had the privilege, I suppose, of seeing how language is used for good, for bad and sudden, sometimes for even ugly. And I have definitely learned that it can be used to control us, to keep us feeling not enough, or it can also equally empower us, inspire us, uphold us, and even ground us, but also, and this is the thing that I think so amazing about language, it can also elevate us to our full height. So words they matter, and how we use them matters, and that's a little bit about. Around, really, I suppose, as to how we end up here and why I end up here. But let me tell you what I'm particularly interested in in covering as part of this podcast.
I am curious about examining the relationship between the language we use and how we experience the world around us, specifically the terms that we use as labels. They often sound helpful. They often sound like they are a label that we might belong to. Except the reality of a lot of this language is that it's actually holding us back. A lot of these words that we use to describe us, these terms, are someone else's idea, and they come with some limited ideas attached to them, some pretty strong, high walls around them, and certainly a lot of negative connotations as well. So I'm here to unpack the feelings, the experiences and the possibilities around these words. My premise for this podcast is that if there's a relationship between language, the way we use it, and how we experience the world around us and how we feel, it would suggest that certain words, their reputation, their social application, the weight of them, the commonly understood meanings, all of this sort of thing is directly impacting our experience and directly contributing to us feeling certain things.
So you might be wondering by now, what words do I mean? Right? I keep saying these words or giving you some sort of top level descriptions, but the kind of words that I'm thinking of are things like, Well, why don't I just say a few and notice for yourself wherever you are now, if you're in the car or you're out for a walk or doing whatever you do when you listen to podcasts, just notice, if you can For a moment how any of these make you feel, if any of them really stand out, if any of them make you feel amazing or awful or something in between, because I'm curious to see how they land for you. All right, here we go. Work-Life Balance, Imposter Syndrome, Inner Critic, Self Care. How about Boss Bitch? Boss Lady, Good Mother, Supermom. What about even words like Hero, Survivor, Leader, Brave. It's kind of interesting, right? Each of those words comes with a weight, with a color, with a sense, something that lands within us, and some of those might feel beautiful, and some of them might feel elevating and exciting, full of energy in life, and others might feel the complete opposite. Did you notice anything in your body when you heard any of those words? Did any of them feel like something in particular?
Learning to tune into how things fell in my body has been a complete game changer, and not only for me, but for lots of people I work with. You see, I think of it like this. The body doesn't lie, but the mind may trick you. Right? The body has a way of always making sure we really know the truth, and it often comes as a weird underlying feeling that may well be smothered by lots of good sense and good argument from our head. But the body tells us something really truthful. I think it's way more direct and honest indicator of of our like essential response, or our essential self. Martha Beck has established a definitive body of work around the subject of the Essential Self, and also a thing she calls the Body Compass, which really is just a method of accessing your own essential wisdom. And if you're interested, check out the podcast notes, because I'll send, I'll put a link in there for some of her stuff if you're curious. But for now, I would invite you to just notice how words make you feel. You know, how some of these terms make you feel, how other language makes you feel. Just collect the data. I'm not asking you to judge it, but just notice. See what feels energizing, see what drains your batteries. Just start to notice if a phrase like Inner Critic or Self Care or Imposter Syndrome makes us feel a certain way. Then. Surely, if we reframe that language and potentially change what we mean when we say it, then surely we can also shift how we feel and experience the world around us.
And that's my hope, and that's the idea of this podcast, right? To have a look at this language, see if we can turn it around and flip the script. So let's unpack some of this. In each episode of Rebrand Revolution, I'm going to offer up a word or a phrase that has serious pop culture cachet, but in reality, I think is stopping us being the best version of ourselves, specifically terms that I think impact our self confidence and agency and feelings of worthiness to be who we are entitled to be as humans on this planet. And I want to have an honest discussion about the good, the bad and the ugly of this language, because it all started out meaning something that was okay, and it's turned into something else. And I'm, you know, curious to look at why. Then I want to have a bit of fun, and I want to offer you a bit of a rebrand, or a makeover, if you like. And as I said, we'll flip the script. We'll turn around the limiting language and the beliefs that go with it, and come out the other side, confident, clear and in charge. What I'm proposing is a 15 minute makeover for your head, not your face.
So thank you for joining us on this episode one of Rebrand Revolution. If you liked what you heard, don't forget to click your subscribe button so that you can hear other episodes as they drop weekly. And if you feel so inclined, please do write us a review. Until next time, stay curious.
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