#1202 No one is Coming to Tell you who You Are
I've been advocating for this all year long. It is one of the thematically intertwined threads that connect the various dispatches that form the quilt of personal development that is this blog. (See what I did there, dispatches - patches - quilt - LOL)
No one is coming to tell you who you are. You must decide that. And remember: Nature abhors a vacuum and will define you if you don't define yourself first.
But how do we define ourselves? Sometimes we take on the labels of our childhood. Growing up, somebody told you that you were nice, or impatient, or loud, or shy, or pushy, or athletic, or whatever, and you took some of that on. You misspelled more words than your classmate and decided you were a lousy speller, or you understood algebra more quickly and defined yourself as a math person. So many self-defining thoughts are only happenstance.
Have you taken the time to think about who you are/want to be? Spending time working on yourself results in an overarching theme of who you are/want to be, philosophically, and the firmer that theme is in your mind, the more your decisions will be congruent with your beliefs. Those day-to-day decisions define you, so deciding in advance and making decisions accordingly disallows poor, stress-influenced missteps from defining you.
Under stress, we may make decisions or choose behaviors that don't quite align with our definition of self. The weaker the definition is, the greater the behavioral variance is from your core beliefs.
There are many ways to think purposefully about who you are. You can literally define your ideal self in each of the roles that comprise you. You can meditate on it, or begin each day with a clear, written intention to be your ideal self. You can write a motto and put it in your email signature to advertise and reinforce a part of your life philosophy. You can talk about it with your life partner or with a good friend.
The thing is that without thought, you are likely not as consistent in your responses to the various stressors as you would be with it.
If you grow up in an aggressive environment, you might get loud with a store clerk, co-worker, or pedestrian who does something that sets you off. Do you say, "Oh, that's me. I have a bad temper?" Have you spent some time in your own head deciding that you'd like to be a person with a bad temper? If you have, then bravo, you are acting in a way that is aligned with your definition of self. But if it's a learned behavior, if it's a habit that triggers easily, I suggest thinking about what you want to do instead and using some of the tools I mentioned to help grow yourself from where you are to where you want to be.
I teach these techniques in more depth than what I'm writing here. I've trained teams of executives, teachers, and even underprivileged high school juniors to use the tools of self-definition, and have never, not once, had a person say, "I got nothing. I didn't need this." Not once. This stuff works. Unfortunately, most folks don't take the time to do this in depth and continue to run old patterns with a shrug of acceptance.
I had a relative who said, "I can't quit smoking. You don't understand. I'm not like other people. I'm a nervous person. I need to smoke to try to stay calm." Unfortunately, that relative succumbed to lung disease.
I'm sure they were told over and over how nervous they were throughout their formative years, and they accepted it. No one ever sat down and thought, "Gee, I'd like to be overly anxious and nervous about everything to the point that I'm uncomfortable in most places and with most people, overreact to the slightest inconvenience, and believe that every bad thing I hear in the world is going to show up on my doorstep." But that's how she lived!
I may be naturally, or environmentally, more nervous than you. (Nature? Nurture?)
But that doesn't mean I can't move in a different direction should I choose to. That's the point. Examining myself and looking at my balance sheet are essential parts of personal growth, and if I'm not growing, I'm dying.
"No man ever steps into the same river twice. For it is not the same river and he is not the same man." Heraclitus
We are constantly changing, as is our environment. We need to regularly look at ourselves, evaluate where we are, and make sure we are moving toward our ideals. I'm not talking about achieving lofty goals. I'm talking about defining yourself and moving through the world with congruence.
Thanksgiving is this week. It is a great marker to begin reflecting on where we've been, who we are, and what we want our lives to look like next year. Don't wait for 31 December to utter a few spontaneous thoughts about what needs to change. Resolutions are ephemeral. Deep work never is.
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