Do ‘be, do’ or be ‘do, be’
How to not get stuck in a karaoke career
Which should come first?
Who you are or what you do?
In polite city networking, obviously “So, what do you do?” is the first question you ask after learning someone’s name. But it’s not a very satisfying question. Because really you want to know ‘Who is this person?’ and the answer to ‘So, what do you do?’ rarely tells you that. It’s basically always an awkward question to ask and basically always an awkward question to answer.
When you’re at school, you get the even stranger question of ‘What are you going to be when you grow up?’ That’s kind of halfway between ‘Who are you?’ and ‘What do you do?’ You can tell it’s an odd question, because, once you’re grown-up, no one ever asks you ‘So…what are you being?’
Then you have the crowd who profess: “You are what you do.” By which, I think they want to say that there is no discrepancy between who they are at work and who they are at home. Or that they believe that their actions define them. Or something. But it begs the question: “So, who are you when you’re not doing anything?” And comes with the implied threat: “If you stop doing things then you will cease to exist.” Which would explain why those people burn out. I do therefore I am.
I spend a lot of my time talking to people about who they are and what they do. And I’ve noticed that people generally tend to assume you can’t choose who you are, but you can choose what you do. And they focus all their attention on choosing what to do and none of their attention on choosing who to be. (Which is reasonable if you’re working from the assumption that you can’t choose who to be.) My job tends to be getting them to try it out the other way around.
What if there is just something that is yours to do? What if there is a right answer to ‘What should I do today?’
And what if the answer to ‘Who am I?’ is always totally fictional? And something you can just choose at will whenever you like?
When I go on stage, I have a process I sometimes use to prepare which is called the Bella Maria process. I ask myself “Who am I? What am I doing? What have I got to lose?” And, whatever I decide, I step on stage as that person. It’s like magic.
A few years ago, I went to perform at a comedy festival in Norway at a club called Checkpoint Charlie. Until then, my stand-up had been pretty nervy and uptight and intellectual and…English. I wasn’t choosing who to be on stage… that’s just how I showed up if you put a microphone in my hand and a spotlight in my face. But this time I tried out the Bella Maria process and actually chose who I would be when I got on stage:
“Tonight I’m going to be a masterful old hand having the time of his life.”
And it worked. I swaggered around the stage, I climbed into front row, I stopped my act to check my phone. Halfway through the set, I hid in a cupboard. And I had the time of my life. Just by choosing who to be and what to do. Do-be-do-be-do. It was kind of a karaoke approach to stand-up. I imagined what a great stand-up would do — a masterful old-hand — and then did that. And it totally worked.
And, the thing is, all the times before — when I’d gone on stage, half-hiding, trying to be clever, standing up very straight and not moving around very much — that was karaoke too. I hadn’t chosen it deliberately — but I was playing out some version of who I thought I was meant to be. That’s bad karaoke. When you’re singing someone else’s song — and you didn’t even realise you got to choose the song. And it’s totally the wrong song for the occasion. Do-be-do-be-do.
And, sure, that’s annoying if you’re standing on a stage in a dark room full of drunk people trying to get them to laugh and they’re not laughing. But that’s nothing. You do ten minutes and then you get off stage. What if it’s your life? What if you’re singing the wrong song?
I quite often end up talking to people who have got to that point in their career where they’ve realised they might be singing the wrong song. And I tend to hear the same things again and again.
“Well, my parents always taught me I had to find a job that meant I could be secure, so I went into asset management…”
“Well, at the time I didn’t feel like it was OK to do something unconventional, so I guess I just fell into corporate law because it was what my dad did.”
When you’re on stage, these stories of “Who am I meant to be being?” are the root of all the nervousness and poor performance. And the same is true off-stage. A life can be bent out of shape just to try to fit around a story like
“to be secure I need to have a nine-to-five job”
or
“being unconventional is not OK”.
That’s what happens when you start with a story of who you are and then try to find something to do that fits it. You end up choosing what to do on the basis of how well it fits with an entirely disembodied story. Not a story about the reality of what you need or what you dream of or what you long for — just a story of what’s OK and what’s not OK. That’s what happens when you decide to do ‘Be > Do’. (I’m just going to try to see how many times I can fit “dooby-dooby-doo” into this story, OK?) If you don’t know you’re doing it, and you build your life around a story of who you are, then you can end up stuck in a karaoke career. Doing something that is totally disconnected from you and your needs. Because it fits with a story.
But the alternative is to start with the question of what to do. Do, be. Not be, do. What is yours to do? (I heard Mary Alice Arthur ask this question at the Meaning Conference four years ago…and it seems to me that everyone I know who saw her talk has been asking themselves the same question ever since.)
Ask yourself what you need to do. Ask yourself what you want to do. Ask what you wish for, what you dream of. Because the answers to those questions have life in them. There’s energy there. You’re there. The answers to those questions tell you what you actually have an appetite for. What you’re passionate about. And that is a way more useful starting point than asking what is OK or not OK. Start with what to do. (And if you’re not clear on what to do, this is how you can find out.) Then, when you know what you need to do (want to do, wish to do, love to do…), ask yourself: who do I need to be to do what I need to do? Do-be-do.
And this is the real magic. Identity is not fixed. There is not one story of who you are. The whole premise of advertising is that you need to do something before you can be something. “Buy this shoe and then you can be more confident.” “Buy this house insurance and then you can be secure.” “Buy this holiday and then you can be calm.” But that story — that your capacity for being confident is dependent on owning a shoe — is only useful to people who have shoes to sell. For the rest of us, it’s more useful to know that we can tell whatever the hell story about ourselves that we choose to. We can choose who to be. And we should choose to be whoever we need to be to do what we need to do.
In order to do anything, we need to play a hundred different roles. Just to get through the day, we need to be a hundred different things. To drive a car, to solve a maths problem, to have a conversation, to catch a fish, to score a goal. We change shape. And it’s a marvellously uniquely human capacity. If you’re a leopard, you’re stuck being a leopard. If you’re a fish, you’re stuck being a fish. But we marvellous, miraculous, shape-shifting humans get to choose different roles — on purpose — depending on what’s most suitable for the task at hand. So when you’re swimming, you’re like a fish. When you’re running, you’re like a leopard. When you’re stuck behind a desk all day, you’re like a… very patient iguana. Or something.
And my days are filled with talking to wonderful people who are are intent on doing wonderful things and who are stuck because they know what they have to do, but in order to do it they would have to be something that they think is not OK.
“I want to quit my job and go save starving children, but people might think I’m being naive.”
“I’ve started my own business and I’ve invented something that will help millions of people. And I need lots of help — but I feel rude asking for help.”
And the answer is always the same. Sometimes it’s OK to be naive. Sometimes it’s OK to be rude. Go do what you got to do. Do-be-do-be-do.
And that way round — it works. Choose what you want to do. And then be who you need to be to do it. Do, then be. Not be, then do. Just play the part you need to play. Adopt the role that fits. Adapt to the situation. This is the capacity of the good improviser. Not to karaoke their way through a scene, doing what’s expected of them. Not just doing what worked before for someone else some other time. But listening for what they need to do in that moment and doing it — with a total disregard for who they are meant to be. That is the role of the hero. The one who doesn’t mind being humiliated if that’s what’s required. Who doesn’t mind being in danger — or being dangerous. Who doesn’t mind being ridiculous or courageous or big or small or in control or out of control. The one who is flexible in their identity is more use than the one who is attached to some fixed idea of who they are meant to be.
And that is the secret of leadership. Not following some karaoke cardboard-cut-out replica of how someone else did something. But being alive. And listening to something more vital than a story of who you think you are. Being able to see past dramas of identity and serve the thing that is yours to do.
If you’d like to learn more about Identity Yoga, you can read more about it here. If you think you might be stuck doing something you don’t want to do, because you don’t think it’s OK to be who you need to be to do what you want to do, get in touch and I might be able to help.
www.charlesdavies.com
www.veryclearideas.com
