Identity: Our Greatest Asset

May 31, 2019

Identity is a multi-faceted, core concept for Who We Are, What Is Acceptable, What Has Value, and much more. Are you aware of all your identities? Learn more about how to use them actively and consciously to help achieve your goals.

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There is one quality that we all possess which is both our greatest asset and our biggest liability. Often times, it’s both at the same time. Typically, it’s an all-encompassing aspect of ourselves that gets zero consideration in active and conscious ways.

What am I talking about? Our Identity. I’m going to break this topic into two posts because, as you might have figured out, I like to keep my episodes short. I’m going to focus here on Identity: Our Greatest Asset with the follow up being Identity: Our Biggest Liability (link coming soon!).

Identity is bigger than our Sense of Self, which is essentially our ability to say “this is me and that is not me”. A good, healthy Sense of Self is what helps us set our boundaries, but it doesn’t necessarily inform us Who We Are. That is the role of Identity, which is so core, so powerful, so central to us that in extreme cases humans will literally kill to preserve it. On the flip side, a strong Identity can help someone weather some truly terrible personal storms and come out stronger for them.

This sense of Identity is so deeply ingrained, so buried and embedded in our core psyche, that for the most part the conscious self isn’t particularly aware of them – until they get challenged. When the core sense of who we are not only gets challenged but is proven false, that is what often sparks what many call a Dark Night. A Dark Night is a period of ego crisis in which core concepts of self are called into question — who am I really, what am I truly capable of, is that how the world actually works? Essentially, the ideas that the child self constructed as a means of survival finally met adult realities and broke. Trust me when I tell you this is definitely a personal crisis – the degree of which is largely how much of the core identity got damaged by the experience. To illustrate, I know one soldier who faced a profound personal truth in the middle of a combat situation which completely shattered his idea of who he really was. It took him years to rebuild from that. After hearing this experience, I often wonder how many other soldiers struggle with similar recoveries. While this post focuses on the Greatest Asset part of our Identity, I wanted to illustrate first just how powerful and deep Identity truly goes, and by extension just how much power it really has.

So what IS Identity? It informs us about our place in this world, tells us where we belong, who we should associate with, what we should be doing with our lives, how we should be living, what kind of jobs we can expect to get, what values we need to claim, what rules we live by, etc. Identities also comes with names – nationality, gender, religion, race, lineage, region, state resident, city resident, political party, occupation, social class, economic status, education level, legal adherence level, etc. All of these are pieces of Identity. Put them all together, the whole messy pile of them, and you have your Identity. As mentioned previously, they are usually chosen by the Child Mind as it works to survive and fit into the family and group dynamics within which it is being raised. For the post, they are never consciously examined after the child mind has decided “I am a member of this tribe”.

After reading this, take a moment and list ALL of the identities which you have ever thought about yourself. As a short example for me, I’m female, American, Southern, White, a writer, politically independent, law-abiding, etc. You get the idea. Know that every single one of these concepts has a series of stories embedded within them. In my post called Stories Guide Everything, I talk about the importance of stories in that they inform us how we relate to the world and they tell us What is True. Stories and Identity are very strongly related. To reiterate, every Identity has a story that helps that Identity claim its place and inform adherents of what is expected and why. If you did the Story Identification exercise previously, now it’s time to start matching up stories with the identities that you have listed.

I want you to be wholly aware that the stories WILL conflict, but you’ve reconciled them in a way that works for you. Mostly, you’re probably not even aware of where they conflict. Having those conflicts pointed out usually makes people varying degrees of uncomfortable. This is what is called Cognitive Dissonance, if you want the psychological term for it. That discomfort, as I’ve pointed out before, is exactly the kind of thing you’re looking for when you seek to gain full awareness of yourself. More on this particular thing in the next episode.

Now that I’ve said all that, within the framework of Stepping Up To Your Potential, why is Identity our greatest asset?

Story Time

It was New Year’s Eve. Resolution time. It’s polite safe conversation, and it’s had often. One of my friends announced he’s chucking the resolution approach. Experience proved it didn’t work for him. Instead, he decided to shift his identity. He decided that going forward, he was the kind of person who went to the gym regularly.

At first, the new identity didn’t quite sit too well with him and he went to the gym … somewhat regularly. After a while, the new identity actually sunk in he realized he really was a person who went to the gym regularly. Now (several years later)? He still goes regularly and it’s just part of his routine. No real hardship about it. No real thought about. He’s just a person who goes to the gym regularly.

It was through that experience that he demonstrated to me that Identity can be used *consciously*, as a tool to help us achieve what previously wasn’t easily available. Let me give you a personal example.

One of my own Stories, and I know which Identity owns this Story, is that I wasn’t worth getting that job that I really wanted. So I had settled. I had consistently aimed low, though rarely had a job ever even remotely challenged me. Remember in the earliest posts I talked about using our own history and experience to help us silence those negative voices telling us we can’t do something? To rephrase that, use your experiences to quieten those nay-saying voices because here’s the proof otherwise. In this case, I took this incorrect perspective of my worth and began systematically deconstructing it, using the evidence of my own life. That story will never go away, it’s mine, but I can choose to reinforce a different a different story, a different identity because I KNOW that the original one was wrong and I’ve got the evidence of my own life to prove it. So I’ve used the story of my experience to help shift my identity into a framework that says “I can TOTALLY get and do that job I really want”. By being aware of both the story and the identity to which it belonged, I can use this mind-bogglingly powerful asset, Identity, to consciously and intentionally rework it.

The Point

Our Identity can become our greatest asset IF we begin to use the power of it consciously. The more the mantle of an Identity sinks into our psyche, the stronger it will become and the easier it will be to live by.

But why? Why is this approach an asset? Because everything about our Self will do whatever it can to support the active identities in any particular situation. Remember that fitting in, for a social species like us, is a survival mechanism. As far as our subconscious is concerned, aligning with our identities is fitting in with our chosen group, it IS survival. When I shifted my identity to include “I’m a product manager” suddenly I can start owning value that I never even saw before. Why? Before, that wasn’t part of my identity – why would I see those qualities if it isn’t part of who I am? Shift my Identity, let it sink in, and suddenly there’s whole new avenues of myself that have been there all along and have actually be used — but now I’m going to make them conscious. I’m going to intentionally work them. By shifting the identity, I’m giving my subconscious self permission to work with that self-concept and support it. To rephrase, by consciously working to embrace an identity, by confirming and reaffirming it through personal experiences which prove it to the conscious mind, then that new identity starts to sink into the deeper mind where it can be accepted as True and acted on without conscious awareness. Like I told you of my friend – he now just goes to the gym 3 times a week as just part of his routine. Before taking on the chosen identity? Not so much.

So I’m using my waking, intentional mind to align the deeper mind so that we are working together in a direction I am actively embracing.

It’s not likely to be an overnight process, but it happens all the time. I took on this podcast because I wanted to track my journey and progress and hopefully inspire you to do your own Stepping Up. It’s taken me quite a long time to simply add “I’m a podcaster” to my identity list, and it’s not as strong yet as it will eventually be but it’s getting there. I also finally owned “I’m a blogger” when I realized I have like 5 blogs on varying topics. It’s empowering to consciously and intentionally own an identity. It’s even more empowering to recognize when an Identity no longer actively serves us and we CHOOSE to let it go.

Be sure to do the exercise I mentioned and add this awareness to your Observer Self so you can start flagging “aha! That’s Identity language.” Once the Observer Self points it out, then it’s up to you to actively consider whether or not that Identity is serving you well as you look to bring all your full potential online.

Video

Video is now also available through the YouTube Channel. The background during the speaking portion is a close-up of my 75 gallon freshwater planted tank at feeding time, so it’s relaxing and still fun to watch. You can even watch a baby angel fish growing up if you see several of them. Be sure to subscribe while you’re there!