To Make This a Better Year, Clarify the Best Source of Your Identity
A memory from the 11th grade still stands out to me today. I’m sitting at my bedroom desk, wringing my hands and finding every possible distraction from the assignment in front of me: Write an essay explaining who you are.
What does that mean? Where would I begin to explain who I am? And why does that even matter?
Interestingly, I’ve gone on to discover later in life that it might be the most important question we can answer.
Experts in habit-formation explain that our identity drives our choices, and our choices drive our future. As we work in 2021 on building better selves, better organizations, and better communities, perhaps identity is the place to begin.
Where Do You Get Your Identity?
Most of the influences around you present an outside-in approach to identity-formation.
This approach centers your identity around a group. Your group suggests that people like you identify with certain things. People who have those things build their identities around doing certain actions. And your personal qualities or virtues are a result of those actions you take.
It goes something like this:
- You’re a [fill in the blank with your: nationality, religion, company name, political party, job function, family role, ethnicity, seniority level, lifestyle choice, past mistake, major life experience, taste/preference, socioeconomic group, etc].
- People in this group identify certain things like minivans, promotions, guns, season tickets to the Knicks, a vacation home, gym memberships, nannies, Facebook, Fortnite, trendy clothes, etc…
- People who have these things build their identity around actions like working late, doing yoga, drinking wine, voting for Brexit, joining a union, going into sales, selling your company, buying local, meeting at a coffee shop, getting a post-graduate degree, taking a stand, keeping the peace, not wearing a mask…
- If you do these things, you be known for these qualities: loyal, smart, funny, responsible, tough, social, compassionate, open-minded, tolerant, cutting edge, etc…
This is the message from society: your group will ultimately tell you who you are.
The emphasis is tribal and makes you anticipate the qualities that others in the group expect of you. As a result, you become a “reflected self,” as psychologists put it, creating yourself as (you think) others expect you to be.
Not only does this approach to self-identity take away your agency and foster an external locus of control (blaming your circumstances on external forces), it also takes away your integrity and consistency, because your qualities change depending on the demands of the group.
Building Identities from the Inside Out
This year, perhaps a place to start improving yourself and making the world a better place is to affirm your truest qualities, independent from the people around you and on social media.
Rather than being a reflection of the newsfeed you read, your Instagram followers, your corporate culture, or what your boss wants you to be, regularly consider the following statement:
I really want my must trusted relationships to know that I am… [finish the sentence with the qualities that most deeply affirm who you are and aspire to be].
When you re-affirm your truest qualities regularly, your identity flows from the inside out, like this:
- My truest qualities are thoughtful, generous, adventurous, beloved, influential, optimistic, discerning…
- Therefore, I will decide to take the following actions: stand up for injustice, make a cold call, turn off email, spend more time with my kids, politely decline the invitation, have a hard conversation with someone, take care of my body, vote for this person, accept this job…
- Ultimately, that may mean that I have these things: trusted friends, more customers, a healthy body, the car I want to drive…
- When I’m acquiring and receiving those things, I’ll naturally enjoy and desire affinity with groups like entrepreneurs, Republicans, educators, fitness buffs, environmentalists, people of faith…
Your actions, things, and groups aren’t fundamentally who you are. They are simply the natural outflowing of your truest qualities.
An Inside-Out Approach to Identity Builds Freedom and Authenticity
Let’s save ourselves needless time, anxiety, and energy this year by building our identity from the inside out.
What’s more, let’s help those around us by affirming their true qualities.
Consider sending a text to a friend or colleague right now that says, “Just wanted you to know that you are (fill in the blank with one of their truest qualities)..”
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