My authenticity journey: the lifelong process of changing who I am
When I was about four years old, I realized I was different. Little did I know that we all feel that way.
Back then, I had three reasons to believe that:
- my hair was different from anybody else I ever met in the 10k people town in rural north-east Italy where I grew up
- I had an open heart surgery that I had to take care of
- My family was (and still is) growing veggies, chickens, and rabbits in our backyards, in order to have high-quality, locally sourced food.
While I didn’t know who I was, these differentiators gave me an identity that I didn’t want.
Around five or six, it turned out I was very interested and not that bad at solving complex math problems and at building Legos designed for older kids. Around then our mum got us (my sister was just about two at the time, so really it was mine), our first computer. The monitor was huge and green, it didn’t have a hard drive nor a mouse, and it wasn’t connected to anything besides a very noisy and very slow printer.
To open up what you now might call “the green turtle painting app,” you first had to put a 5 1/4" floppy disk, and after the machine booted up, switch to a different floppy disk where the app resided. Then you had to write a command line to open the app.
The fact I was very excited about all of the above did put me straight into the category of the nerds. I think this is the first time I realized that not only I was different, but also I had an identity.
That is also when I started to understand that fitting in was important. So I unsuccessfully tried to keep my nerd identify hidden from the general public (peers) while also trying to hang out as much as possible with my nerd friends. It was my first encounter with a lifelong good friend, the impostor syndrome.
The time I started to explore the scary idea of being myself with a broader group was when I was 11. It was because I was sent by my parents (really my mum, who has been the innovator of the family) to an international summer camp run by the non-profit www.cisv.org. This organization turned my life upside down in the following ~20 years. It made me aspire to be a better version of myself. Not sure it was necessarily successful, but it turned me from an introverted nerd to an extroverted dude with dreadlocks, from a math/data geek to a decent storyteller. These changes weren’t only motivated to try to be as good as some of the smartest, kindest, charismatic, and genuinely good people I ever met (among others I want to name a few of my real-life idols: Darione, Juanca, Alice, James, Tiago, Marcos, Astrid), but also because I realized that how you deliver a message is possibly more important than the message itself.
It turns out that it doesn’t matter if you are right, what matters is that people hear you, believe you, and act based on your message. It was a pretty uncomfortable lesson for somebody who was trained in math and algorithms: those either work or don’t work.
CISV did push my limits, to the point that once again changed my identity. I became a confident and defiant global citizen. Within a few years, I traveled 50+ countries; got to be an exchange student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Spain; got a job as Software Engineer @ HP in Milano (after telling McKinsey Milano that I wasn’t game to cut my dreadlocks yet to work there); moved to New York City for the MBA program at NYU; went back to Milano to do my summer internship with BCG, then convinced them that I really “had” to stay in New York.
This new me, though, wasn’t entirely real. I didn’t know at the time, but my New York high rolling consulting life was something that would grind me to the core. Within three years, I got ground into a deep depression that only leaving BCG would start to heal. Now I can confidently say that what almost killed me was that I wasn’t living according to my values. Helping large corporations making more money and dealing with people wearing important suits wasn’t cutting it for me.
After Sophie helped me to quit, right after I got promoted, we moved west. I was in deep soul searching mode, and the only thing I could remember was that the year I spend in California was awesome. Flip-flop weather all year long, people willing to be barefoot in offices, big ideas & dreams, big nature & trees, big tech & potentially money. It was my gold rush.
Cutting my losses in New York City also allowed me to refocus one more on myself: who was I again? When I left BCG, I could barely recognize myself in the mirror. Like anybody in deep trouble, I tried anything and everything on the self-help book: psychotherapy, psychiatry, exercise, mindfulness, journaling, gratitude, etc. Turns out they all help :)
In summary, I was somebody new again: more centered, more resilient, more aware.
In the last five years in San Francisco, my challenge has been to accept that I have been and still have in me many identities, and many more will come out.
When I watched over the weekend the video below, I finally could take a big breath and think: I am not crazy, I am not alone, even Harvard Business Review realizes that. Never mind that eastern practices have been embracing impermanence for thousands of years.
Enjoy the video. Come out and play with me.
All views are my own.
