Stepping out of some else’s shadow.
This piece is pretty near and dear to my heart, and I am so glad a lot of you voted on my Instagram polls because you gave me permission to write about something that has been on my heart for quite some time. I stepped out of someone else’s shadow not too long ago and it was truly a scary season for me. I didn’t realize how vulnerable it would be and how alone I would feel. I felt like I was pushed onto a podium and given a mic, but I had no words to say. I was nervous and confused. I found myself fumbling over my words and desiring a lot of affirmation because I was secretly battling insecurity. To some degree, I am still continually trying to figure out the man I am supposed to become — but this piece isn’t about me. This is for anyone who desires to step out of someones else shadow and starting stepping into your own identity. This piece is for all the people wondering what it is like when you step out.
In order to define “shadow” for this context, I want to immediately defuse the bad connotation of that word. When I say “shadow,” I mean following in someone’s footsteps that is wiser, older, and more experienced that you. This could be a sibling, a mentor, or anyone you look up to. It would be helpful during this read for you to pick someone that you identify as filling any of these roles in your life.
When stepping into someone’s shadow is healthy
Let’s first address when it is healthy to step into someone’s shadow. Again, we are talking about stepping in behind a sibling, mentor and anyone else we could look up to.
You should not hesitate to step into someone’s shadow when you have no idea what you are doing and you want to learn more.
For example, before any new employee steps into a new position at work, the employer almost always gives training/shadowing opportunities for new employees to learn the ropes. Some jobs might take more than two weeks to learn the ropes, while others just might take a day. The greater the size of the responsibility, the longer length of time the employee should commit to shadowing someone. If you have never run a business before but have dreams and aspirations of starting your own, it would be wise to get a business degree — but you should also shadow a CEO. You should probably stay in this “shadow” for several years before you make any first moves on your own to start your business. Therefore, stepping into someone’s shadow is not always a bad thing. It is these types of experiences that prepare us better than any course we could take. You cannot put a price tag on getting to study a great leader close-up, learning from their every move and mistake.
We learn more in relationships than we do any other place in our life.
Some things to be aware of when you find yourself under someone’s shadow
We just talked about the healthy aspects of stepping into someone else’s shadow and when those relationships can be fruitful, especially when we have no idea what we are doing and are in need of a mentor. Therefore, as we continue on in relationship with them, here are three simple things to be aware of:
- The person casting the shadow will always have more influence on us than we give them credit for. When we are commited to this person for a season, we are positioning ourselves in a place of humility and vulnerability. We say, “Teach me, I don’t know anything!” In this, we need to be aware of how vulnerable we are to their personal convictions becoming our personal convictions. The Bible says that the whole point of mentorship is that we would look like the people we follow — however, someone’s preferences should never pressure us into breaking our personal convictions. No leader is perfect and we should be aware that along with adopting their positive characteristics, we are susceptible to take on some of their flaws as well.
- We tend to think their success are our own — especially when we start to receive praise from other people for them. We initially redirect these types of comments to the person we are learning from, but in time we can begin to thank people on the behalf of our leader. Soon enough, their successes become ours.
- You are always known by association. This can be a good thing and a bad thing. We need to be above reproach in everything we do, because now we represent more than just ourselves — we also represent someone with a high reputation and more on the line than us. This should make us think twice about the choices we make.
When stepping in someone’s shadow is unhealthy.
Quick recap: we have talked about when it is healthy to step into someone else’s shadow and some things to be aware of when we do. Now we are going to talk about when it becomes unhealthy.
In this section, I want to highlight some reg flags that indicate we are starting to live out of some else’s identity.
- Their personal convictions become our personal truths. We alluded to this some in the other section, but I wanted to expand on this more. When we do not build out our own foundations of personal convictions, we will always let other people have the final word for us in our decisions. This can lead to us making a wrong decision or not letting the Bible be the ultimate source of truth.
- We stop hearing other people out. After living in someone’s else shadow for quite some time, it can be easy to start alienating ourselves. We begin to become more and more distant from our normal crowd, and instead begin surrounding ourselves with people who only agree with the person who provides our shadow. When our entire circle becomes about blindly agreeing with one person, we need to notice how much we are truly being influenced.
- We feel less valuable when we are not in the shadow or proximity of that person. We lose our autonomy and sense of identity when we correlate our value with someone else beside the person of Jesus. There are always people in our life that bring us value, encouragement, and direction, but never at the expense of losing our own identity.
The risk of being YOU
One final thing before we step out of someone else’s shadow — we must prepare oursleves for how scary it will be to step into our own spotlight. If we stay in someone else’s shadow for too long, that becomes our safe place. We get accustomed to it and never want to leave that place because it provides our only sense of security. This can be a very dangerous process that leads us to build a house of cards — a counterfeit identity.
The hardest thing about stepping out from someone else’s shadow is that most people honestly don’t know us. We find out that when people saw us earlier, they only knew us by the association and reputation we had with our shadow. It can be scary and humbling to start all over again, but it can also be the best thing that ever happened to us.
However, it will take a process. When we finally step out of shadow, people will relate to us in the same way they always have, because they are unfamiliar with the “new you.” It often takes people quite a long time a take a new picture of us. This is quite challenging, but it strengthens and tests our identity. For how will we know if our own identity is true if it is never tested?
