Your identity is embedded deep within you and is at the core of who you are.
Your identity is embedded deep within you and is at the core of who you are. But what is your identity, how is it formed?
The Source of your Identity
Your identity is unique to you. It is the way you will navigate through life and make important choices and decisions about how you want to lead your life. As I mention in the facebook live, there are two different strands of thought about how our identity is formed. There is the pearl necklace thought where each pearl is an event in our lives that forms our identity. The total necklace with all events is the whole of our identity. Then the second strand of thought is that our identity is like a strand of rope. A rope is made up of many small sections of rope. The sections are short, they don’t last from one end of the rope to the other. Rather they wrap around each other and, intertwining, form a larger, stronger object, the rope.
Your identity in times of crisis
In times of crisis, or life change such as having children or returning to work you may feel you have lost your identity. How is that possible to be unsure about your fundamental criteria for self expression?
Life’s competing cries can blur the clarity of knowing who you are.
The source of your identity, lies deep within you. Not on the surface. Your identity is so deeply implanted, and sometimes, often, so deeply buried by life’s events, that it can be a struggle to connect with it. Instead of living by identifying who you really are (I am creative, I am loving, I am athletic, I am happy, I paint, I write, I think), we identify with events in our life (I am a mother, I work, I am a wife, I am on a committee).
Often you get glimpses of your identity through negative experiences – “I wasn’t born to do this, I don’t want to live here, I can’t do this as a job anymore.” Sometimes you can’t conform your identity to the convenient role you would like it to play, which can be a crisis point in your life. If you are born to organise people and be engaged socially, then a research job is not going to suit you or supply what you need for life to have purpose.
Being brave and facing up to your identity
Facing up to your identity is scary too. Speaking personally, I feel I’ve only just started the process. For such a long time I felt that my identity was really only a matter of dealing with what life threw at me. And also my identity was tied up in what other people thought of how I was dealing with what life threw at me. Maybe you identify with that. Do you let the circumstances of your life dictate who you think you are? If you are successful do others evaluate your identity based on your achievements? Getting in touch with who you are and what you want out of life can be confusing. To take away this intimidating and confusing potential we have put together a short but useful list designed to help you keep in touch with yourself.
How to monitor your identity and combat self sabotage
- Keep a file of styles you like and women whose look you admire. This combats not knowing what to wear when you want a new look but don’t know where to start.
- Keep a file on people you admire and other women in career roles you admire. This combats not knowing what your next career role could be.
- Know what interests you and engages you. Make a mental note and in order not to forget write it down. This combats not knowing what skills you would like to develop or areas you would like to explore, it combats not knowing what to do when you know you need a change.
So there you have it. Identity. How to protect it, how to face up to it, and how to combat self sabotage.
Did you find this post useful, I’d love to hear your comment in the boxes below.
Have a great day, bye for now,
Sarah
