Day 41: I Am More than an Identity

Last night while swimming a few laps in the pool, I began thinking about everything I am learning. I am doing this “60 Days of Self-healing” exercise that has been quite enlightening. There are so many insights that have come alive for me. I was wondering how I would be able to retain it all. I figured that with all this new information “I must be completely changed”!

I quickly slipped to a whole line of thinking about how there must be a new me.

I began to fantasize about how I should act. You know, now that I have this sage wisdom, perhaps I should be more reserved. Only offer incredible insight when someone asked for my guidance. I should also offer that guidance in as few words as possible, so that they are amazed by the power and depth of my words. Add to that, I should stay in the emotionless place of an Observer who sees all sides, but participates in none!

OMG! Where did all that come from?

I realized where my mind and thoughts were spending time and quickly shut them down. These were not “higher thought”! This was my ego searching for a new identity. Looking for a way to take ownership of all the awareness I’ve experienced recently. Awareness that comes from this daily writing exercise. Writing about my personal process of self-healing. My ego was trying to lock them in so that they could take over and figure out how to navigate from here. How to navigate me right into the past.

I know a thing or two about identities. I have developed more than my fair share of them in this lifetime. Many of the identities I developed co-existed at the same time. I was one person to one group and yet passed myself off as someone entirely different in several others.

I wasn’t a con-artist per say… I just tried to please as many people as I could by being exactly who they wanted me to be. They never asked that of me. It is just that I wasn’t secure enough in myself to feel or believe that being me was enough.

I had a meteoric rise in the corporate world. My first position at the financial institution I was with for many years, was a ‘trainee’. It was the first time my mind had felt challenged. I was completely out of my comfort zone, but constantly stimulated. There was something about that first job — that created a hunger for and gave me permission to learn.

I absorbed information like a sponge. I was good at what I did and within a year was on a management track. It was a growing area of automation and technology, and I was at the forefront of it. Once the first phase was over, the leadership of the organization wanted to know what else we could do. I would research and investigate. Then propose and implement. The growth was so rapid that I was a VP and District Manager by the time I was 30.

Back then, nobody (but me) remembered that I had no qualifications. No degree. No specialty training. I was a kid from a small town with a high school diploma and a lot of energy. My peers were other VPs and managers. Many who had one or more impressive degrees. Heck, even some of my employees had fancy degrees from elite schools. Every once in awhile someone would ask “where’d you go to school?”

I never lied about not having gone to college. Instead, I adopted identities that made it less likely that anyone would ever ask. I wore the suits and ties that were like the ones that successful men around me wore.

I didn’t even own a tie or dress shirt when I originally applied for the trainee job. The HR representative who was my final interviewer asked me if I was sure I really wanted the job! She thought I might be better suited to “something outside”!

Well if I developed an identity for the workplace, I did the same thing in my social circles. Trying to fit in. Doing things that were of no interest (and some that were!) to me, for the sake of acceptance or being part of the crowd.

I got so lost in the performance of these identities, that I had no idea who the real me was. This doesn’t mean life was bad. In fact a lot of my life looked like it was ideal. I experienced many things that I never knew were possible. By all appearances I was successful. And in many ways I was. I just wasn’t fulfilled because I did everything for everyone else, not for me.

It took a several years of soul-searching and experiential learning to set down those identities. I had to extricate myself from the hamster-wheel of performing. It took commitment to find my authentic voice. Who I am and what I value. I had to let go of hiding behind an identity and trust that I was enough. That I would be accepted for who I am, not what I do.

And here I was in the middle of this new learning and awareness of Self, trying to concoct a new identity! Fuck that!

We are here to live and learn. We are Consciousness. We are an extension of All-That-Is. Not separate, just different. Everything we experience and learn evolves us and it evolves Consciousness. There is NO WAY TO FAIL. Just as there is no one right way. Instead there are infinite numbers of right ways.

Each of us is unique and it is up to us to find our own expression. To define for ourselves the meaning of this odd collection of experiences called Life. Even the me that hid behind identities was evolving and growing. I just longed to feel and know my Self.., and my connection to All-That-Is.

So yes.., I could adopt and identity and still continue to grow and evolve. It just isn’t as interesting for me. I am more than an identity.