The Invisible Friction of False Identity
Level 5: Master Player
Future Guardian,
Many roads in TGA lead to "know thyself."
But until you know yourself how can you know if you know yourself or what to even look for? How can you know your living your best life if you haven't figured it all out?
It's a real chicken and egg situation.
A real, label on the bottle you're in situation. Etc.
Perhaps there's a way we can live our lives which ... let's say ... "forces" our "self" to be as free as it can, and which then leads us to the inevitable outcome of a life of meaning and happiness?
I want to take you on a little journey of Identity here, and I'm gonna start with an unhappy life.
"What I really wanted to do was a story of someone who was like me. Who was 35 years old and who had everything and who was miserable."
Matthew Weiner - Creator/Writer of Mad Men
Mad Men is a fascinating exploration of personal identity butting up against societal roles and expectations set by external perceptions of those identities.
While the main character is overtly living a secret identity, literally, the real exploration of identity is on display in all the characters, their everyday life, as they find themselves navigating the vicissitudes of life as ad men in New York in the 60s.
It blends into the background and for most viewers is perhaps unnoticed because this is the reality that most of us live in. A reality where we are often driven to adopt or apply identity to ourselves as the path towards fitting in to the rest of the world.
"Choose the job and then become the person who does it" -- I explored a thread of this in Keeping You From Your Full Potential:
But that dynamic is on display in full force throughout the show. Each character putting on the identity they think they need to have for the success and the life they desire.
The deep story of the show that is woven throughout every episode of every season,
Is the invisible friction caused by this dynamic, overtly illustrated through the main character's unnatural dichotomy between the life he has taken on to himself, adopted, and is attempting to live because that's who he believes he needs to be ... and the person he really is underneath all that.
Thats the story because,
That's the story of so many people's lives.
The invisible friction between who you think you need to be, the identity you take on because of that, and who you really are and that identity being buried underneath.
Who Am I?
I think there is an inbuilt desire to have and live a clear internal identity.
The meaning of this wrapped in how we show up in the world with our gifts, the impacts that we have, the desires and interests we fulfill, the satisfaction and happiness we get from life.
I think it's likely if we can't live our internal identity, we cannot experience happiness.
If you aren't living your internal identity, then you're going to have this friction between the life you are living and the life you need to live from within yourself. Even if you have everything in the world and it all appears to be good, how can you feel any of it if you're living a life that is not from within yourself?
How can any of your potential - known, unknown, full - come to fruition and give you a life of meaning and fulfillment, if you aren't actually living your life?
Perhaps our ability to enjoy life and have happiness is tied to goals and drives, and then we take on roles in order to achieve those goals, and then we take on and the identity we make for ourselves because of those goals and roles.
There is an intertwining of role and identity, but neither is the other.
I think "identity" is not just the role we take on, but wrapped up in the idea of our own identity is how we present ourselves to the rest of the world.
Perhaps self internal identity is rooted in our need for other human connection. For social groups. To be a part of a group, a village, a society, a culture. After all we are not biologically lone wolves. We are driven by a need for connection and relationships with other people.
If you don't have a clear personal identity, how can you communicate who you are to other people (consciously and subconsciously). If other people don't have a clear understanding of who you are, then they are left to fill in the gaps and impose identity upon you.
Which is perhaps often how we get shoved into roles and that ends up defining us.
So,
Let's explore role first.
I'm gonna bring in an unusual example.
Dungeons and Dragons.
Really, any role playing game. Where you ... yea ... play a role.
Often in the choosing of that role, and the playing of that role, comes something a bit deeper and harder to define than just "the role."
As a quick intro, Dungeons and Dragons is a tabletop role playing game where you use a combination of imagination focused through rules and randomization of dice throws to determine outcomes and move an experienced story along.
You make a character at the beginning. You represent that character. You live that character through the game and the unfolding story (which you most likely become a hero in).
That character will typically fit one of a few roles. In games like this you could boil down the roles to "Healer", "Tank," and "Damage Dealer."
That is, the person who's responsible for healing and keeping the party alive, the person responsible for taking all the attention of the enemies away from everyone else and just not dying, while the person who does the damage kills the enemies.
Some basic hack and slash roles.
There can be other more nuanced roles as well. Someone who is good at talking to people, relationships, and getting more out of conversations for the party. Someone who is the navigator. Someone who in combat is focused on controlling the crowd of monsters so that the fight is easier.
(Just a few ideas off the top of my head)
These are all roles and not identities because they are focused on the action you are taking. The healer does the healing. The tank does the getting hit and staying alive. The damage dealer throws fireballs or stabs the enemy. Etc.
Identity is more shaping.
As an identity you can be a healer. Someone who wishes to help others, heal the sick, cure illnesses etc. You can be that person and take on the role of healer. But you can also have complex characters who’s identity and apparent role mix or even just don't align.
This can go either way. You can play a "Cleric" which is a healing class, not as a healer, but rather as a fighter, because that's the identity you want for your character. They can still fill that healer role in the group to a certain point, because they have the skills. But their identity is more complex than the thing they do.
(Notably, they can’t heal as well as a character that embraces both role and identity)
Identity is more complex than the thing you do.
Than the role.
Here are some things we might see as an identity:
A parent.
An entrepreneur.
A business owner.
An artist.
A musician.
Each of these has role and identity intertwined.
After all, much of our life can be seen through the things we do - perhaps is even defined by the things we do. We are beings of action. We live for a brief moment in time and in that we create.
So, it's only natural to look to our identity based on what we do - or what we at least see externally that we do.
Role can lead to identity, Identity can lead to role.
But if we're talking about the deepest meaning of who we are and living a life of full potential, we've got to be clear on the differences.
Parenting is a role.
It can also be an identity.
What does it mean to be a parent?
You bring a new life into the world. That life is not only vulnerable, but is sprouting and growing and discovering and blooming into a whole unique person. A person with their own questions about identity.
They look to you to understand how to be in the world.
That role is something either thrust upon you or one you willingly take. But either way, it is a role you are in whether you like it or not.
As long as you have children, you are in the role of Parent.
How you choose to identify as a parent is another matter altogether.
(How many "parents" don't really behave like "a parent"? And how many childless people really are actually parents at heart?)
What can define the identity of parent?
That is perhaps a question for each person uniquely to themselves, but we can make some assumptions for the sake of exploring this concept.
A drive to nurture and grow and guide a child into the world, who biologically comes from you.
A drive to nurture and grow and grow a child into the world regardless of origins.
A drive to have a family, to lead a family, to be a part of a family.
A deeper unexplainable drive tied to who you came from and why you're here in the first place.
A deeper unexplainable drive of fulfillment which calls you in this direction of nurturing new life into the fullness of being
On and on.
If you have that identity it could call you to take on the role and have children.
But what if you never have children? What if you never have your own or adopt?Does that lessen or change your identity?
Imagine not being able to have children, but having these traits as your identity, and then not finding another way to live that identity into the world.
How about "Entrepreneur"?
Personally, I never wanted to identify as Entrepreneur, and now I think I have a clearer view of why.
I think externally people talk about identity more as a form - as a role.
Entrepreneur is someone who goes and does their own shit. They make their own life outside the norms of society and typically are creating businesses and whatnot.
When I stepped into that role, I felt really averse to the identity.
Probably because I didn't want to be an entrepreneur.
I took that step because I had a vision of my life and of things I wanted to come to life - and I came to the conclusion that the only way it was going to happen was if I did it myself.
The only way I could have the life I wanted was if I made it myself.
You might externally look at my explanation and say "yea duh you're an entrepreneur" - but to this day I still don't feel that identity. I have an aversion to tying myself to it.
I don't make my life choices and decisions around being an entrepreneur because that is not something I feel is important to me.
Yes ...
I can feel some of you reading this wanting to argue back "BUT THE PATH YOU'VE TAKEN MAKES YOU AN ENTREPRENEUR!!!"
Don't worry,
I'll keep unpacking this whole Role v Identity thing
I am what I do when I’m doing it?
One of my favorite quotes, and I wish I could remember where this came from, but its one I ran across many many years ago in my first business endeavor as a photographer, has always resonated with me on this level.
My very first business, I ran a solo portrait and wedding photography business.
Before this, I didn't even realize that an individual could start a business. I thought that was all the purview of rich people with more time and money than they knew what to do with so they made businesses.
(funny perspective to look back on)
I had started to question though - do I really need to work for a company? What if I made enough money on my own to not need to be employed? What would that look like?
And then I started looking at the things I was doing and skilled with and suddenly wondered ... what if people paid me for photography?
Etc. All down the line.
When I got into the business and had clients, I ran into much grander new problems. How do I actually build and run a business? How do I market and sell what I am doing? How do I grow and have sustainable income?
And I started to experience a juggling act of roles.
On the one hand I was a creative photographer who captured people's story on one of the most magical and special days of their life, so they could relive it and share it ...
On the other hand I was a brand new marketer and business builder trying to figure out all those questions and get more clients and get them consistently ...
And on the third hand I was my client relationship manager and communicator, a new role I was also figuring out as I went.
Constantly shifting between 3-5 different roles,
And I started to feel a friction between who I saw myself as and what I was doing. I didn't have conscious realization of this at the time mind you, this is me looking back on the experience and realizing what was going on.
I always saw this as a natural challenge between my creative mind and my business mind - but I think now it's something deeper.
In any case, this one quote has always stuck with me:
"I am a photographer when I'm photographing." (a quote from someone as a response to "are you a photographer?")
Because I also felt odd being identified as "a photographer."
Someone would ask me "are you a photographer" and I'd be like ... well, I do take photographs of people and events, sure. An odd response perhaps, but I just didn't feel like "YEA I'M A PHOTOGRAPHER!"
I wasn't doing this because I was a photographer.
Not in terms of how I saw myself. I was doing this for two reasons - one, I saw it as a path to figure out life on my own terms, and two, for this specific work because I had a gift in capturing particular emotional moments ... events in time. And I was able to bring joy to people with that.
I didn't care about "being a photographer."
But I was ... when I was photographing. Because that to me was just a role. Not an identity. However other people certainly attached identity to it because of the role.
From my internal perspective,
Role is what you do.
Identity is who you are - or we could say, why you do the role.
Role is the form.
Identity is the function.
But let's see how Identity pans out, Externally.
Again,
This is intertwined with the internal. Because certainly how we choose to express our identity is a factor of what that means from an external perspective.
But perhaps even that goes deeper, in that our sense of Identity is inextricably intertwined with how other people see us because of how that defines the way in which we show up to others, in the groups we're involved in, our jobs, our communities, society as a whole.
How does external perspective influence identity?
How people see us and understand who we are and what that means to their relationship with us. Because that's what everything is. Relationships between people. Even if it's a passing stranger relationship, when we walk by someone on the street we at the very least subconsciously assess and we have to wrap up an understanding of another person in a very brief moment of time.
Who are they?
Identity includes not just what they are doing, but who they represent, what they appear to believe, why they may do things.
Identity is the calling card for connection in many ways because we can connect on an identity level before knowing who someone is ... or maybe we can say we can't know who someone really is without connecting to an identity.
And perhaps that's why we so readily assign identity to others.
Oh they are a Yankees fan. Identity. Connection.
So external perception of identity has an important use.
I think much of the time in our culture that external perception of identity ends up driven by the role the person is in.
Police officer. Athlete. Teacher. Barista. Real Estate Agent. Corporate Leader. yadda yadda
These are all roles people fill because they are what they do. But if we don't know who a person is, our external perception of their identity is going to end up wrapped around what they do - their role.
And so on.
We will just end up in a loop on this.
Identity is personal and comes from within but is also driven by a need for connection and to fit into a culture and a society and a community so we tailor our identity whether consciously or unconsciously to fit the reactions and interactions we desire with others.
Hence why Don Draper "chose a job and then became the person who does the job." Because it's easier to take an externally assigned identity and then try to fit to that. You don't need to know or accept anything about yourself to say "I'm an ad man" and then go do the life you think an ad man does.
Much easier.
You don't have to accept anything about yourself to go be the external identity you know is accepted and can bring you "success."
But there's a reason the writer of Mad Men wrote the character the way he did.
Because despite having everything that character or anyone could dream of having in life, he was miserable.
To suggest that the way to be successful, to have what you want in life is to choose an identity and then fit yourself to that identity is to me, backwards.
Intentionally making the life we want.
The easier path is to choose a role and then build your identity around that role. Because you can look outside of yourself - the external perspective - see what that role is, see how you perceive the identity in that role, and then apply that external perception to yourself.
It's the whole 'cant see the label of the bottle you're in' conundrum.
You can look at other bottle's labels and use those to make decisions for yourself. Much easier to do - but how irrelevant is that to who you really are?
You might get lucky.
It might be that we're draw towards roles that in some way align with our identity without being conscious of it. Sometimes we chose a role which fits our identity perfectly and we're able to ultimately live a life of full potential.
But I'm trying to figure out how to do this all intentionally.
I think you have two options.
Either you chose the role and then build your identity around it ...
Or you eschew the role, in favor of doing everything you can to discover your own identity. And then live your own identity and allow the roles you play in life to emerge from living that identity.
How do you live a happy life?
If we boil all of this shit down, all the principles and philosophies of The Guardian Academy, all of why everyone is here reading this,
I'd wager the root of it is a desire for a meaningful life of happiness.
I'd wager that most of us arrive in TGA because we are in one way or another unhappy or discontent with the way things are going in our lives.
Because we're experiencing some struggle, some challenge, some friction.
And perhaps it's driven by the difference between where we are and where we want to be.
But perhaps it's also driven by the difference between who we are acting as and who we really are.
Thing is,
I don't think we can ever NOT be in a spot where we aren't heading towards where we want to be.
You always be on the path of struggle and challenge towards the next thing. As long as you keep being human and keep striving forward for the vision of things you believe can be then yes. Even when you achieve the goals you originally set yourself out to achieve, by virtue of walking the path you'll always reveal new goals in the distance.
Happiness is NOT therefore getting what you want.
Because you will always want.
And I also don't believe happiness isn't not wanting.
Even though there is fair argument in those philosophies. If you lack a desire for more than you have now, to be more than you are now, to do more than you have now, then definitively you can't be unhappy for not having those things (because you won't desire them).
But we also know the truth of growing trees.
We're human so we're always going to be driven through the tension between life and death to grow and do and create. There is a discontentment that happens when you define yourself by your goals. When you say "I'm going to have the tallest tree" because in that focus you put yourself in a state of constant failure until you are successful, so we shift our perspective to say "I'm going to get really good at growing tall trees," because then our focus is claiming something that is attainable in the very present moment, the joy of the process of growth and becoming.
But all that still necessitates a goal. A tension from where you are now to where you could be. And even if you shift your focus to be grateful for the tension and the experience of moving through that tension, you still need the goal to create the tension - and then the goal can shift.
In any case matter what you do, life is inevitably defined by death and that tension.
And our question is not how do we find satisfaction in moving toward our goals (answer: embrace the process not the result), the question is ...
How throughout all the vicissitudes of life, of shifting goals, of growth, of process, of walking the path ... do we make a life where we can be happy no matter what?
I believe the answer lies in Identity.
Because if we chose to walk that path by installing an externally perceived identity onto ourselves in order to find success, then we trap any ability for who we really are as well as for our unknown and full potential to emerge.
We lock ourselves into a static image of that identity when we install it into our life.
Whatever Identity ultimately means to you, how much that's wrapped up in how others perceive you and how you fit into your relationships, your community, your society, your culture ...
The more you can allow your own most internal identity to live and be in the world, the more that can emerge from that being.
Full Potential.
It's an emergent property for a reason.
Because it cannot be made to happen. You cannot decide that you are now living your Full Potential, it has to come out of the life you are living - and that follows enacting your Known Potential and discovering your Unknown Potential.
So to me the path is clear.
Don't chose a roles and build identities around them - don't fit identities to other people's expectation, don't change who you are because you think that's necessary to get what you want.
Live who you are first.
Live your own identity, and allow the role and the things you do to emerge from that lived identity.
I do that as a writer.
Because writing is clearly a core part of my identity. And what I do and how that all unfolds to create the life I want is emerging from the work of living that as a key part of my identity.
What about you?
Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.
, CMO The Guardian Academy
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Couldn’t agree more that identity is a fundamental concern and so much more than any role we play in life. Identity informs purpose and belonging which in turn informs meaning and legacy. It is far too easy (and common) to fall into the identity trap of becoming what others want or what institutionalized education and occupation wants you to be. You’re becoming lies and being more of what you’ve always been. To trust the process, you must trust yourself. To trust yourself, you must know thy self. Start with who. Start with you!