Your Identity

from Able Leader, October 2008

by Steve Kaye

Who are you?

Take a moment to jot down your answer. Then reflect on it. Now, tell me what it means.

Here are some possibilities:

1) Your Name

This is the label given to you by your parents. It's a basic identity. And with it your parents set your course for a lifetime.

2) Your Title

This is the label given to you by your boss. It defines your role at work. And with that, your boss has set the bounds on your authority, expectations, influence, responsibility, and everything else related to your job.

Then your boss tempts you with titles that are supposed to make you work harder, think smarter, or behave. All of this controls what you do.

3) Your Description

This, for example, is what you see when you look in a mirror, step on a scale, or stand next to a ruler. It's the collection of demographic data that define everything from being large enough to ride on a roller coaster to being old enough to qualify for a discount. It also determines your personality, your manner, your preferences, your . . . everything.

You were born with this. It's in your DNA. And yet, many people spend a lifetime attempting to deny, hide, or change it.

4) Your Evaluation

This is your perception of yourself. Most people determine this from evaluations voiced by others and from personal results. Then they place their evaluations on a scale compared with the environment around them. For example, someone living in a mansion may feel like a failure because it's the smallest mansion in town, while someone with a new bowl may feel like a success because it's the largest bowl in the village.

Once again, even your evaluation comes from external influences.

5) Your Skills

This is based on the things that you know how to do, such as run a business, write software, saw wood, remove tumors, sew clothes, draw cartoons, and so on.

Most people sort of fall into a skill. That is, they accept a job (which just happens to be the one that was offered to them) and are assigned to work at some task. Then they learn (or perfect) the skills needed for that task. Over time, these skills mature and evolve to something they never could have predicted when they were twenty.

Perhaps, by now you notice a pattern here. All of these identities, such as name, title, and so on, come from the outside. If we continued with other identities, such as Your Stuff (the things you collect) or Your Associations (the groups that let you join them), we would find more connections from the outside.

And all of these external identities have one important thing in common: They all limit you. They confine you. They control you.

They keep you small.

So, there's one more identity to consider.

6) Your Real Self

This is the person inside of you. And it's your real identity. All of the others are fiction. Because they exist only on the outside.

Your real identity is the life inside you. And it has no limits.

So rather than chase after all of those moving shadows, your purpose is to go deep inside yourself to discover who you really are.

At this point, some of you may be wondering, "So how do I do that?" or maybe "Why don't you just tell me who I am?"

First, if I were to tell you who you are, I'd be providing another external identity.

And second, here's the point behind this article.

All external identities limit who you are. The more you let go of these, the more freedom you will have. And this freedom will make it easier to discover who you are.

So, once again, tell me: Who are you?

Much success,

Steve Kaye
714-528-1300