Six Stories of Identity

Transcript

Lets talk about six stories of identity.

So I think I mentioned before some years ago I was in a deep meditation and this idea entered my mind that everybody has at most 6 stories they tell themselves that comprise their identity. I don’t know if we need to have an identity but it can be useful, the leverage we can gain over ourselves by having an ego.

Some say we can destroy the ego and let it go. Maybe some can, they’re really enlightened beings can do that and maybe that’s something to aspire to. In the meantime we have our identities and we can use it to our advantage.

But of course if we choose the wrong stories to keep telling ourselves, those things can limit us, hold us back and prevent us from spiritual progress because we are identifying with things that might be defects or things that aren’t fluid or flexible enough to allow growth.

Engaging with Kane Ramsey’s programming CBT and neurolinguistic programming on Udemy. He talks about this concept of identity versus personality. In Ramsey’s view personality is something that can be fluid so perhaps when we are in high school and identifying with being the funny guy or class clown.

But then later we are in a professional context and consider ourselves professional and polite person. Perhaps we consider ourselves someone who dresses well or something like that.

But if we can get down to the details of it then the problem is, people confuse identity and personality. They identify with things that might be transient things that occur one time to another. That means in order to change our personalities, we must undergo some kind of identity process.

That means a problem if we have a too rigid structure of identity that means it will be difficult for us to become a new person which we must do several times throughout our life.

If we stay the same as when we we’re 10 years old when we are 70 years old we are going to have a lot of problems relating to the world because the world is changing structure. We are changing structures. If we are still identifying with the same things chance are we identify with things that no longer are.

The people we used to be as much as we would like to try. Of course I have mentioned many times that part from Karl Roger’s book On Becoming a Person at some point we begin to embrace the idea that we are an ongoing changing process and we are constantly in flux.

Now, Ramsey says everybody has certain things that they value. He has this exercise where its a list of a hundred words and you start to pick out things that you value and try to prioritize them and say “what is the thing that I value most?” This is a sort of way that you can develop an identity which is flexible and based on something important to you.

According to Ramsey, your values might stay the same for the entire life. Your identity and personality revolve and change around those. I couldn’t tell you if that was entirely true but it’s true enough that if we determine what our values are then those values can stay with us for a very long time. I did this exercise and I might need to review my notes around it but I remember that I discovered one of my core values is faith.

So many other values coming into alignment with that. Which of these is more important?

I found most of these other values I had were in some way serving faith. As the parable goes, the foolish man built his house on sand. The wise man built his house on rock with a steady foundation.

Something which is going to stay there and last for a long time. We might even identify, of course these days a lot of people are trying to explore their gender identities. A lot of people feel they are gender fluid so this is transient this is not necessarily something that will last for the long term. It may change from one day to another.

If we identify as something fluid sometimes that can help us because we can find a way to be flexible but its not getting to the core of the question. Likewise some people will identify with a diagnosis or illness that they had.

You may have an illness or a group of symptoms like ADHD, there’s a big difference between having and experiencing ADHD and identifying as someone who experiences ADHD. When you identify with something it does mean in some sense your ego is supporting these things.

Even if you are in the position to do something a little different, you might comply with your own expectations because you identify with that thing and you want to be that thing. Maybe you can be something else.

Maybe you have the choice in deciding what kind of stories you will tell yourself. What kind of person you will be. Maybe you will be kind, faithful and confident. Maybe you prioritize treating other people with respect. Maybe you identify as being diligent not as auto exigent. Maybe your identity is yet to be discovered.

Maybe its a question for you and you don’t need you be restrained with what you once thought you were. What are those stories, those 6 stories that I am going to tell myself?