I have lost count of the times I have heard clients and friends tell me, “It feels like I don’t know who I am”. And it takes me back to when I was asking myself this core question that we are all asking about ourselves. I struggled for weeks with this question, reviewing my whole life and writing down the things I had done, the roles I had played (not to mention the roles I had been assigned and put into against my choice!).
But I was never satisfied by the answers. Defining Who I Am in terms of What I Do just seemed too limiting, inauthentic, and confining in a way that didn’t feel big enough for such a big question. So one by one I crossed each potential answer off the list, each one insufficient to answer a question, a question which energetically felt so much bigger than the answers I had been programmed to respond with. I started feeling my way through the question itself, feeling into how the question made me feel when I really sat with it, imagined different people in my life asking it to me, and reflected on all the ways I had felt and shown up in my life through myriad scenarios, situations, relationships, roles, tasks, dreams, success and failures, etc. I have been a child, athlete, scholar, musician, teacher & learner, husband, lover, dreamer, engineer, spectator, leader, facilitator, writer, father, speaker & listener, therapist, coach, trainer, thinker, feeler, and doer. So many roles, so many activities, so many interests…all which over the years have ebbed in flow in terms of time and money spent and received from them, interest and motivation to engage in them having risen and fallen.
So I wondered, could Who I Am be answered more in terms of How I Feel? I considered how, as a student for example, at times I was excited and motivated; other times I was scared, bored, or resentful of the class and its tasks. As a lover and romantic partner, there were times I couldn’t get enough of my partner; other times I couldn’t get away from them fast enough. When working a project, whether for work or for personal pleasure, I have been maniacally focused on some with hyperfocus and complete dedication, while at other times stuck in a depressive funk where nothing felt like it would satisfy me. How I Feel didn’t get me any further in answering the question of Who Am I, any more than What I Do!
As I kept going, there was a part of me that wanted to reframe the question as What Do I Want to Be? But this only got me into the weeds of my fears and insecurities, only made me feel anxious. Thinking of who I want to be was really about believing that I wasn’t already good enough as I was; it was also more about who I wanted others to see me as, because I was afraid that Who I Am was unacceptable to them, afraid they would see my insecurities, vulnerabilities, and incompetencies, and that if they saw those qualities in me they would reject me or shame me. So I had to reject that line of thinking, because at the end of the day, it was really only answering the question: Who do other people think I am?….which is only a road that leads to permanent insecurity.
And so I came back to that question: Who Am I. If what I had done was so varied, and what I felt was so inconsistent, what others saw in me was partial at best….how was I to answer that mother-of-all questions in a way that held a genuine and deep sense of encompassing my essence, my self-hood, my being-ness?
So often in life, the problem is not so much that we are not finding the right answer, it is that the question itself (or the implicit assumptions we attach to the question) is what is getting in our way, This was one of those times. The more I pondered, and then rejected, the assumptions I had been programmed to insert into the question itself, the question ultimately morphed from Who Am I, into “What has been true of me throughout ALL of these experiences in my life?”
When I landed on this revised question, I found the process of finding the answer a little less difficult. I could rule out the things I did, as well as the feelings that were unpredictable and varied. I could rule out any quality I didn’t believe I had in sufficient quantity, and I could eliminate the inconsistent feedback I had gotten from others. It was about naming qualities within me that carried consistently and permanently through all my whole life, qualities that encompassed not only all the activities I took an interest in, the accomplishments and the failures along the way, and the wide ranging palette of feelings I had experienced, no matter how big or small or random they may have been. Whether starting something new, or completing something old and familiar…I could start to see qualities that had carried through every single experience in every role of my life. It was in naming these qualities that I could finally and confidently affirm Who I Am. For they had held true in the past, in the present, and into the future….no matter what or who came into my life.
For me, the qualities that rose to this level were things like relentless, passionate, loyal, dedicated, resilient, courageous, sensitive, reflective, and loving. These were qualities that, though they weren’t always acted upon in the same ways, nonetheless they were always there in me in some fashion. For example, while I haven’t always been dedicated to the same activities, interests, or pursuits (much less even completing everything I start!), I was always dedicated to seeking more information, more knowledge, and higher orders of wisdom and perspective. I have certainly had my moments of passion about a relationship or even a particular flavor I was enjoying in the moment–moments that have come and gone;, but I have never not been passionate about healing and helping the world to find greater ease from patterns of suffering. No matter what I have done or not done, these qualities have always been present within me to one degree of intensity or another.
When we have taken the time to strip away our programming that has told us HOW we should think about ourselves, we come to see ourselves more clearly and with more empowerment. And with this clarity, we may begin to wonder how it is we learned to view ourselves that way in the first place. We may even begin to see that HOW we have been thinking about ourselves (e.g. I Am What I Do, I Am What I Feel, I Am What I Want) has, in fact, not actually been serving our greatest sense of power, goodness, and value in our own lives and in the world. We begin to see that the very mechanisms for HOW we have been going about defining ourselves and finding our place in the world have in reality been merely the conditioning of living in a system that has wanted to keep us from connecting and leveraging our greatest strengths and goodness. These flawed approaches we have been programmed with only serve to keep us feeling insecure and afraid, believing that to be known we have to keep doing or feeling the things we have been led to believe are acceptable and tolerable to others. It is this mindset we have been programmed with–and that we have continued to keep reinforcing for ourselves unconsciously–that continues to make us feel unsatisfied and discontent, no matter how hard we try to measure up to these false definitions of Who We Are.
So if you are inspired to rid yourself of this programming and to set yourself free of these cycles of uncertainty, challenge yourself to sit with these new questions deeply: “What is true of me throughout ALL of my life’s experiences? What quality has always been present no matter what, even if it hasn’t been in the forefront of my experience in a given moment? What qualities have I ALWAYS returned to after moments of crisis or stress?” Do this from a commitment in you that is determined to find affirming qualities in your whole self. If at first all that comes up is negative and judgmental, push yourself to find qualities that emerge in the greater scope of your entire life experience that are affirming and empowering. It may take some time and dedication to stay with the process until you find them, but in the long run, they will help you create a deep sense of security within yourself when you do.
