You Act Out Of Your Identity
Your self image is reflective of the way you see yourself and the way you believe others perceive you. This leads you to behave in ways that will often reinforce these self-perceptions.
The more immature your sense of self, the more likely your identity is to be entangled with an external identifier – your job, your role, your race, your belief set, your nationality, even your sports team. Any perceived threat to these can then be translated into an attack on yourself.
I was confronted with this dramatically in 2010 through life-changing incidents. The first foundation rattling came in my new role as a kitchen franchise manager. It was so different from my previous role as production manager. As production manager I had over a decade of experience, having worked my way up from the floor. I knew every part of the process and I was good at my job. I had been in the role of franchise manager for about a year. We had been pressured to sell and hit targets despite my misgivings on the factory's ability to deliver. The day came when it was undeniable that the factory was weeks behind on orders and, with Christmas creeping closer, it was obvious that a number of jobs would not meet their promised delivery date. My role meant I was assigned the job of updating clients. People were devastated and emotional. My breaking point came after one woman had finished verbally offloading her frustrations onto me in the middle of the showroom, sticking her finger in my face while screaming at me that I was a liar. I walked into my office to find a note of encouragement from a team member. I dissolved into a blubbering heap, had to take a week off work and was sent to a counsellor. This was the first major domino to fall in a sequence that forced me to realise how much my identity was tied to people's approval.
I suffered from chronic people pleasing and conflict avoidance, choosing peace at any price. That price got very expensive and bankrupted the facade I had been living under. It took a lot of soul searching over the next 3 years to untangle my identity from other people's approval and from roles and positions I had. Learning to be honest with myself dramatically improved my life and the quality of my relationships and conversations.
Think of discussions you have had with friends about music tastes or sports teams. If you like country music and they like rap music, or they like one sports team and you another, it's easy to be disparaging around their choice. In the friendly backwards and forwards banter, you try to convince the other person to agree with you. This desire to have others agree reflects your need to be affirmed in who you are and what you believe. You seek their validation of your perspective to reinforce your identity. This need is amplified the more important we decide the topic is.
Take, for example, your political viewpoint. Many people are staunch supporters of one party or political ideology. Changing your conviction and being convinced that another party, or approach, would be better often feels like betraying yourself and giving up a part of who you are. Humans have loss aversion at the best of times. Letting go of your perception of yourself when presented with new information, often requires a strong and healthy mindset and a secure sense of self. This allows you to accept others’ viewpoints without seeing them as a threat to who you are and what you stand for. Rather than looking for validation in having people agree with you, you seek to understand. Feeling secure within yourself and who you are, being comfortable in your own skin and with your worldview, frees you to see others as they actually are and not as you want or need them to be so that you will feel better.
When you can understand the value you bring as a person, you do not need to look for outside validation – which often comes across as arrogance – but rather you have a deep-seated confidence, knowing that you are a person of value and that you bring something of value to each and every relationship. Is your mind your friend, allowing you to be comfortable in your own skin? Does your inner coach encourage you to be authentic and bring the best of yourself wherever you go?
