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Mistaken Identity

Just who do you think you are?

Are you sure?

A few weeks ago, I had a brief conversation with woman whom I met by chance at the Southern California Renaissance Faire. Dark-haired, slender and outwardly fragile, and with classic porcelain skin, she was beautiful. Her daughter and son-in-law, she said, were helping her choose a costume. (Many RenFaire attendees add to the fun by wearing “period” costumes.) She wasn’t sure who she wanted to be.

It turned out she meant this on a much deeper level than simply choosing between cotton or velvet, wench or royalty. Unwillingly divorced after thirty years of marriage, she was struggling to understand not only what had happened to her, but who she is now that she’s no longer “wife.”

Changing identity, whether by choice or through circumstance, is always difficult and usually painful. I suggested that she take the time to allow hers to unfold and show itself, rather than trying to force the process like bulbs in a hothouse.

That was when she startled me by saying, “It‘s been four years.”

I felt tremendously sad for her. Having had one identity ripped away — “wife” — she took on another — “divorcee” — that keeps her bound in relationship to someone else. We had no time to talk; her companions had moved on up the street.

“Find out who you are, not what your relationships are,” I said to her. “You have tremendous strength inside you; let it support you, and let it be part of your new identity.” I know she appreciated my concern; I only hope she heard what I was saying.

Your identity can keep you bound in the past (as with this woman), or it can pull you forward into the future.

• If you believe, as one of my clients did, that you are someone who never finishes a project, you’ll have a hard time starting anything that’s meaningful to you.
• If you believe, as a good friend of mine did, that you are someone who has healed from old wounds, you’ll stay stuck in the loop of reliving those wounds.
• If you believe, as another client did, that not having an advanced degree reduces you in the eyes of others, you’ll struggle with your sense of credibility, no matter how much others respect your work.

In each of these cases, shifting identity created real forward momentum.

• It wasn’t about the projects themselves, it was about learning all he could about what he was doing. When that learning was done, the real project was over. No longer stuck, my client is designing an amazing new career that’s multi-disciplinary and takes advantage of his voracious appetite for learning.
• My friend is now someone who’s healthy instead of someone who has healed. The difference may seem subtle when you read it, but it’s made a huge difference in her life. Her relationships with others are stronger and her ability to take care of herself is exponentially better. I can hardly believe she’s the same person when I talk to her — and of course, she isn’t!
• Consciously adopting a new sense of credibility — mature, responsible, reliable, and wise — seemed artificial at first, but has allowed my client to put herself out in her professional community in ways that would have been impossible. “It’s been a lifeline,” she said to me, commenting on how she can simply stop and ask herself how someone with this new sense of credibility would act.

Mistaken identities are inevitable. As your life evolves, your identity gets stuck — stuck in the past, stuck in a misconception, stuck in fear — and then your life gets stuck as well. Likewise, when your identity is too firmly rooted in the success or failure of what you want to accomplish, you can’t move, even though your goal may be deeply meaningful to you. Either of these situations leads to frustration and a sense of failure.

Are you wearing an out-of-date identity as ill-fitting and strange as wearing a RenFaire costume to your office? Are you defining yourself in terms of other people rather than yourself? Is your identity so tightly bound up in the success or failure of your dream that you’re immobilized, unable to take action?

Take the time to examine your sense of identity and hold it up to the light of the present reality. What does it look like, and how can you let it grow so it represents not only who you are, but who you want to become?

“Our achievements of today are but the sum total of our thoughts of yesterday. You are today where the thoughts of yesterday have brought you and you will be tomorrow where the thoughts of today take you.” Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, physicist, and religious scholar, 1623-1662.

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