I find that one of the most common threats we face on a daily basis are threats to our identity. I find that the answer is to develop a sense of identity that is multi-faceted and detached from your current area of occupation.
Threats to our identity happen in particular when we want to escape from our comfort zone or try new things that might not be perfectly aligned with what we have done before – or what people think our identity is.
Still, overcoming these questions about identity is essential in developing ourselves. because self development means our identity tomorrow will be significantly different from our identity today. And we definitely need to overcome the question “who are you to do this?”.
To avoid suffering in this situation, one of the key response is then to make sure our identity is not related directly to what we are busy doing, or at least that some of it is consciously foreign. It is not easy because most organizations will tend on the contrary to try to align our identity to their existence. For example at work it is essential to detach our identity from our actual occupation or job title.
In general, it is essential to consciously develop our identity as a multi-faceted, multi-fold definition to avoid being taken hostage in a single identity.
How multi-faceted is your identity now?
