I look good! I am wearing my favorite Salvatore Ferragamo Loafers, Armani jacket and Ermenegildo Zegna tie and slacks. As I walk into the HRC Federal Club Luncheon at Dallas Petroleum Club in Dallas I feel confident and handsome. I am here, I hope, to land a date. I look for a vacant spot at a table with someone I know. No such luck and the only empty seats are at the very back of the room. As I get closer, it appears to group of close friends in their own world and not really interested in a newcomer. Somehow the confident guy with a very financially rewarding job got replaced in an instant by a 6-year-old self from Ogden, Utah, in a homemade Halloween costume when all of the other kids had the cool printed rayon costumes from Grand Central. I reverted back to a little boy who felt full of shame because he didn't fit in. As that old identity got activated, I no longer measured up and wanted to fade into the wallpaper. From where I am today, I was adorable as the identity that held the shame and sense of not belonging has been jettisoned. Should it return, albeit briefly, I easily say. ''no longer who I am''.
Over the course of a life, we develop many different identities; son, sibling, friend, husband/wife. Some are based on affiliation like church, schools political party. Others are activity or hobby based. Occupation and workplace add additional identities to our portfolio. We even have identities for our sexual preferences and attitudes - think leather daddy or pig. When you think about it initially, it is easy to think I really don't have that many identities and then you start writing and the list is long. Identities serve as place holders for significant amounts of information. They tell us and others how we belong. What we believe. How we might respond in certain situations, etc. Most of us update addresses, phone numbers, ''home'' in map apps and we rarely edit or update out list of identities. As we grow, transform, evolve, we have elements of identity no longer fit and we rarely stop to drop those that no longer fit. These identities often are dormant until our psyche trots them out to offer meaning to a situation - often not the meaning we wanted.
Andrew Yang changed his party affiliation today from Democrat to Independent. His choice to change his political identity is illustrative of how we can be constrained or limited by our identities His switched, he said because he believed that identifying as a Democrat no longer was going to be effective for him to bring the change to the national conversation that he thought is necessary. I am not writing about his change to have a conversation about politics rather because this is what seems to be ''in the field'‘.
One of my clients was recently lamenting that he no longer felt he ''belonged'' to the group of friends he had carefully built over the last several years. They still had shared interests and a feeling of connection to one another and he some time enjoyed spending time with them. But as he explained, there are some things - things important to him where they now have different interests because he has shifted his identify in some areas. And with many other clients, we have found lingering identity at the root of resistance to change. The old identity keeps them stuck or vacillating between old and new identity.
As we move into a ''new normal'' and in not all that many months - a new year, I am curious what lingering identity needs to be off loaded and updated.
- you have lots of money,
- you travel to dream vacation spots,
- you eat at the best restaurants,
- you have an impressive title at the ‘’right’’ company,
- you live in a ‘’desirable’’ zip code and so on.
My coach asks, ‘’so what values are operative for you in this situation?’’ I answer form my ‘’best little boy in the world’’ place, ‘’discipline, and one or two others.’’ Invoking his best Thomas Leonard, ‘’telling what you see without judgement’’ approach and trying not to fume (only marginally successful), he responds, ‘’I will NOT allow you to use discipline as one of your values!’’
I had always been told that to get what you want, you have to be disciplined. Not true. You have to be focused. Discipline is but one way to be focused on an outcome and not the only way.
I took a while to find that curiosity is a value/approach that can keep me focused on what I want without the ‘’grab you by the scruff of the neck and push your face into it’’ feeling I get with discipline. That grab you be the scruff of the neck can be fun in a scene but otherwise not so much. Curiosity, of the looking under every log and into every craggy hole on a hike variety, always has me wondering, ‘’what’s there’’. This is similar to the chemistry set I had at 8 years old. The book of experiments was fun but I REALLY had the most fun dumping stuff together to see what would happen.
Many of the men I have worked with, express similar frustration with discipline yet deeply desire to get shit done – to go after their dreams and desires. Many of the men who have been most successful (by their own standards) have used curiosity as the way to stay on track and focused.
My coach recently challenged me to post on a regular basis. I immediately thought, ‘’writing – posting, hell NO! – a task only discipline will make successful. I took a breath and decided that perhaps I can play some. Now, I am curious to see what happens when I do.
Thus, welcome to ‘’My Monday Mantra’’ (M3) and what is M3 you ask? For now, it’s a simple, ‘’so what happens if?’’. Every Monday I will be musing on ‘’what happens if?’’