Member-only story
Identity Crisis
What do you believe about yourself that’s currently preventing you from reaching your goals?
We all have a series of identities that guide our every action, often without us even realizing it.
What you eat, where you get your coffee, where you went to school, what you studied, your politics, how trusting you are of strangers, how open to change or disruption and on and on and on. All these decisions and more are rooted in the identities we’ve adopted for ourselves.
Often these identities are benign, helping us navigate a complex society by narrowing the near-infinite choices we face on a daily basis to a more manageable number of options that people like us would be open to.
Sometimes they serve us and the world, like, “I’m not the type of person who litters,” or “I’m not the type of person who eats meat.”
Owning the identity of a survivor, fighter, or hustler can help us persevere through incredibly challenging situations and emerge intact on the other side.
But while many identities we own for ourselves may serve us, many do not. In fact, many actively stunt, undermine, or otherwise sabotage the productive work we might otherwise be doing. Again, usually without us realizing it.
The most pernicious of these are identities that have served us well in the past and…
