My Identity Box
Much of my adult development has been marked by the energetic task of constructing and strengthening my identity. What I am and what I am not.
AM: Strong woman. Caring. Professional. Really Nice Person. Like, really nice. Contemplative-activist. Diplomat. Sporty. Intelligent. Adventurous. Vegetarian-leaning, but-open-to-harvested meats-preferably-with-unmotorized-support…
AM NOT: Much of a make-up wearer, Walmart Shopper, neo-colonialist, conservative, lazy, shallow, eater of generic meats, snowmobile rider…
I’ve cultivated these hard and subtly (alongside many other performative identities), and yet each can be disrupted and contested. The things I proclaim “I am”, I’m not, and the things “I’m not”, “I am”.
Aside from my external identities that I also perform (white, cis-gender, heterosexual, highly educated, married, mother, former senior executive) I continue to draw a tight box around myself.
I have cultivated and curated a representation of who I want to be and how I want to be seen to access power, privilege, and belonging.
Becoming someone of ‘value’
Some of its good, let’s be honest. For healthy development, it’s well understood that we need a healthy sense of self.
A fast-paced creative prompt “who are you?” and “who are you not?” can illuminate our essence. Our answers likely outline a wild person-hood that in constant unfolding. We answer differently, depending on mood, state, decade and level of consciousness.
As a feminist, you’ll likely agree that our intersectional identities give way to a more accurate socialized identity. Yet, as I’ve explored elsewhere, it can be a narrow and confining way of representing ‘Identity’.
While our identities give us roots, tell us who our people are, and illuminate our access (or lack of) to social power- they are dynamic and evolutionary.
Yet I can forget this.
Reading Jia Tolentino’s essay “The I in the Internet” in Trick Mirror Reflections on Self-Delusion, underscored the new technological terrain of our individualistic, capitalist culture in the West. We’re socialized to believe we have to ‘become somebody’ in our adult life– somebody with expertise, solutions, advice, charisma, and value. And the internet is the grand theater on which all is staged and consumed.
Like an empty vessel, we can delude ourselves that we’re a ‘self’ waiting to be filled: with knowledge, information, and capacities in order to be taken seriously.
Corporate leaders perform aloofness, a detached presence, reinforcing their authority and untouchability.
Business gurus perform the ‘expert’ and their manufactured charisma to a growing number of ideal clients.
Film writers reuse the same script and dramatic effects in order to capitalize on audience trends.
Academics perform brilliance and endless busyness, as the holy grail of self-importance.
The cost of performing a fixed Self
In all of these examples (stereotyped, I know), we’re conditioned to perform a fixed Self that seeks to secure a basic goodness, belonging and value.
And in that pursuit of value, we often (and unknowingly) get lost in a hall of mirrors, where we become unsure of where our edges begin, and those of another end.
The edges blur when we give into comparison, following, deferring, copying, un-critical thinking- losing ourselves in the process and forgetting to express what’s authentically, refreshingly our own.
The cost of our performance is the erosion of our vibrant, inner aliveness.
Intoxication with our fixed self yields a loss of free-flow energy, magnetic human connections, and a deep distrust of our inner impulses and visions.
We become the status quo leader, writer, entrepreneur, or academic- compromising our creativity, influence to dismantle the systems that confine us.
Because we’ve become so invested in (and intoxicated with) them.
Fixed Self. Fixed System. Suffering
Agency and Sovereignty to lead authentically
When is agency truly your own?
When are you free of comparisons reverberating from the chords of others’ paths, careers, leadership style, or offerings?
This is the messy human journey navigating two necessary poles: belonging and becoming.
To me, our commitment to sovereignty honors our agency and developmental path of becoming ‘self-authoring’ (as we say in adult development).
We’re invited, again and again, to leave the hall of mirrors, put down our phones, close our computer tabs, and become present to our inner poems, guardians, visions and impulses.
Instead of confining ourselves to titles, awards, followers, and reputations- which only reinforces an infinite hunger to get ‘more’ in order to “stand out in the noise”, we’re called to a journey that satisfies.
When we listen and tend to the inner poetry of our own lives, we are liberated. Creativity, imagination and unencumbered expression comes forth all on its own.
And this is where authentic leadership begins.
Practice for you- Where and how are you performing your identity?
If you have a niggly feeling that you are a little attached or intoxicated with certain aspects of your identity AND have a feeling of dissatisfaction- this practice is for you.
This is a self-observation practice in part, and an invitation to drop the external ‘noise’ that pulls you away from a wider, deeper You.
1. Observe where you reinforce a fixed self in the context of your interpersonal relationships.
- Is it how you ‘perform’ to social media (IG/FB/LinkedIN/Medium/Tik Tok)?
- What aspect of you do you ‘perform’ in your leadership role at work?
- In your spiritual or creative life, what do you emphasize or reinforce with others.
2. Inquire: what is it on behalf of? Safety? Belonging? Staying connected? Feeling seen or valued?
3. What can you let go of in order to minimize the external noise that’s encouraging this way of ‘performing’?
Examples: how you spend time on your phone/internet, unnecessary meetings with people who don’t enliven you, listening to the “should” in your thought patterns, saying ‘yes’ to things that reduce the quality of your joy or contentment
4. Get in touch with your inner impulse for exploration and creation.
Listen to it, follow its roots to who you are in this moment, and who you’re becoming. What are you called to be close to? Self-expression, a feeling, an impulse to do something off-script…?
The intoxication with our identity- can be hard to break free from. We are socialized to belong and crave the experience of feeling valued. Yet when you have the inkling that your fixation and performances may be at the root of a deeper dullness in life or leadership- get curious about what’s calling underneath it all.
Your liberation and growth depends on it.
Jennifer
