It's time for us to leave our ostrich ways behind.

In Part 1 of this three-part series, I'm calling us in to stop avoiding the things we don't want to see. Because what we refuse to look at doesn't disappear. It quietly works against us—undermining our creativity, momentum, strategy, and our ability to create real impact together.

This episode is about revealing your narrative identity: making the invisible visible, giving voice to what's been assumed, and naming what's already shaping (and sabotaging) what you're trying to build.

In this episode, I explore:

Why "not looking" is one of the most common and costly patterns for individuals and teams
How narrative identity silently determines how far we can create, build, and innovate
The critical difference between thinking something and saying it out loud or writing it down
Why making the implicit explicit is a lost art and essential leadership work
How avoidance shows up as "spinsville" in teams, strategy, and planning
Why clarity requires contrast (and why that discomfort is necessary)

The Reveal Work: 6 Questions I Invite You (and Your Team) to Ask

This first step—Reveal—is grounded in six foundational questions. I especially want you to do this work with your team, organization, or movement:

Who are we?
Who do we belong to?
Why do we exist?
What are our values—lived, not laminated?
What do those values mean for what we will and won't do?
What do we believe—and invite others to believe with us?

These questions don't create a mess. They reveal the mess that's already there so we can finally do something about it.

Why this work matters

I've learned (sometimes the hard way) that:

We can't fix what we won't see.
We can't create beyond who we believe we are.
Teams divided on identity will always pull apart, not together.
Strategy, vision, and goals fail when identity work is skipped.

Asking these questions doesn't cause misalignment. It exposes what's already working at cross-purposes.

A note on support

If you're thinking, "This feels too messy to do on our own," you're probably right. I share why facilitated space, patience, and structure matter when teams do this work and how I support groups through Revealing, Reclaiming, and Reframing their narrative identity so they can move forward with real momentum.

Coming next in the series

Part 2: Reclaim — Choosing the parts of your narrative identity that are lost that you want to keep, and which ones you want to get rid of
Part 3: Reframe — Rebuilding a narrative identity from the parts that work and which will let you create what you're here to create

🎧 Related listening: Episode 122: "It All Starts With and Goes Back to Who You Are" sets the stage for this series.

If you're tired of what's quietly killing your creativity, focus, and forward motion—this is where the work begins.

About: The Reframe to Create podcast is hosted by Joy Spencer, an Executive Leadership and Storytelling Coach, Speaker, and Organizational Development Consultant working with professionals and leaders at all levels within organizations. Joy leverages over 17 years of experience she gained while working to champion change in social justice movements, including those related to global access to essential medicines and consumer advocacy for online privacy. This work required a dogged commitment to not merely challenging the status quo, but to reimagining and working towards creating an ideal future. It is this commitment to creating that has shaped Joy's coaching philosophy and approach today. Using her signature C.R.E.A.T.E. framework, Joy guides her clients through a process to become incomparable in work so they can get paid to be themselves.

Follow Joy on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/joy-spencer/