Identity
I used to think I was shy.
Not because I felt shy, but because that’s what I had been told I was.
My Dad told everyone I was shy. So this became something I believed about myself. But it always made me feel at odds with who I actually was. Sometimes I would even act shy, especially when I was around him, just to prove that I was exactly who he thought I was. Like that was more important than who I thought I was.
The truth was, he was so bloody loud that everyone else in comparison seemed quiet.
Identity is absolutely fascinating to me. It is something we choose, although we don’t think that we do.
We are all actors in life and the world is our stage and we love to perform. Our ego chooses who we are based on our lived experience. The ego is our sense of self and it exists to allow us to make sense of the world. If we didn’t have an ego we would have no idea who we are or what our place in the world is.
So we create these identities to fit into the world.
But are these masks who we really are?
“I used to think I was shy.”
So often we let other people dictate who we are or who we think we should be instead of ever actually being the person we are.
The ego’s primary purpose is to keep us safe and as human beings we are driven to fit into society. So safety comes from being in the tribe. So we do the things our parents want us to do or be, in order to fit into family.
My Dad named me Alexander Laurence Gyles Love. He named me that because he thought it sounded like the name of an investment banker. My Dad insisted that I learned to play golf because it was the highest paying sport at the time. I hated golf. But man did I love to see him swell with pride and admiration every time I hit a golf ball over 200 yards.
So I pushed myself to hit it further and further because that was how I thought I would be loved and accepted by him.
But did I ever feel pride and love with myself for doing it?
Not really.
“I wanted to be loved and accepted without being fully seen.”
If you had asked me if I cared what my Dad thought about me and if I wanted his acceptance at that age I would have said no. Absolutely not.
But when he died and I started to unpick everything, I realised just how much of my life and who I wanted to be was based on exactly who he wanted me to be.
I took on the persona of an unfeeling logical CEO type. In my mind I felt too much, so I cut off my empathy. I tried to become the exact kind of person my Dad wished he was.
All because I wanted to be loved and accepted.
Because I wanted to fit in.
The same can be said of friends. I did a similar thing with friends growing up. I was emotionally unavailable so I went for emotionally unavailable friends. Like attracts like.
I wanted to be loved and accepted without being fully seen.
I wanted to be accepted by other men while not possessing the same type of characteristics that typical men had. So I would act in an overly masculine way that simply wasn’t me. This attracted other men like this and then I am surrounded by people who don’t actually know me for who I really am.
I was performing a version of myself that I thought would be accepted.
And the more I did that, the further away I got from who I actually was.
Identity can be a prison.
When you tell yourself that you are a certain way and you play a specific role… what happens when you want to do something that doesn’t align with that?
You won’t do it.
“I would never do that.”
But when you are in conflict with yourself and invariably you do something that doesn’t align with that version of you, you will hate yourself for it.
In the same way I told myself I was shy, I tell myself that I am a Coach. But when I over identify with that role… I struggle to let myself be open to being wrong.
Sometimes I think I should have such amazing insight and perception, that I couldn’t be wrong or misread something or someone. How could a good coach ever do something like that?
That is when I am in the prison of the identity I have given myself.
When they say, “You are not your job.” this is what they mean.
“Identity can be a prison.”
Our identity is a choice. It doesn’t have to be a prison, yet so many of us are a victim of who we think we are and who we think we should be.
You probably don’t think it but every day you wake up and you put on your identity in the same way you dress yourself.
You have done it so many times that it is unconscious.
But you wear the same clothes every day.
“They were never really yours to begin with.”
Much Love,
Sandy