So, here I am writing a blog post on a topic that gives me more frustration and more joy than most things on this earth.
My Journey with identity starts just like everyone else’s, at a young age (maybe even when you’re born, you just don’t know about it yet) when you find out your ‘strengths’ and ‘weaknesses’ or you’re born into a specific family of a race or religion, even height or set of beliefs and many other factors that feed to you, who you are. But really, I want to talk about these perceived “weaknesses” and how they form a significant part of our identity. No, they are not the whole picture and your strengths would be just as hard to change as your weaknesses but nearly no one goes out trying to reverse their strengths.
Learning your strengths and weaknesses
There are lots of ways as a child or when you’re older, that you… let’s call it ‘find out’ what your weaknesses are. It might be seeing others excel in an area you haven’t quite got a handle on, like maths in school. Or your parents telling you or other parents in front of you, that you’re the messy child and your brother is the organized one.
These labels that you accumulate just through being is an enormous weight, that with childlike innocence, can very easily shift your perception of who you are. It’s no one’s fault, it’s just life, and luckily, it is all a matter of perception.
For me… if you didn’t gather from my very specific example earlier, I was the messy child. Always had a messy room, I was not as organized nor as disciplined, and would constantly be in trouble and disappoint my parents in that regard. Whether that’s true or not, that’s my perception of what happened. I was a gymnast and people would always say “Wow, you must be so disciplined with all that training”. However, because my idea of discipline, formed by my environment, was being neat and tidy, I couldn’t understand why I didn’t fit this perfect athlete mold.
So why was this so detrimental to my identity? And what the heck does this identity word even really mean in this context? Let’s take a quick detour.
The science of your identity: The thermostat
So, a bit of behavioural science first. Our brains are pretty clever, after you have been told you’re ‘messy’, the brain goes out and looks for evidence to prove that. And if you’re looking for something hard enough, you best believe you’re going to find it even if you have to bend the truth to make it so.
Your brain likes to prove and confirm things. So there you are, creating your own self-fulfilling prophecy without even knowing. Now, once you have your evidence and you’re a confirmed mess, all your brain has to do is be the thermostat and keep it that way. Our brains and bodies in most scenarios love what’s called homeostasis. This is keeping everything at its ‘optimal’ level. Like the thermostat in your air conditioning, if it starts to get too hot it will pump out cold air and if it goes slightly too cold, it will switch off to bring the room back to the ideal temperature. This ideal temperature control for your brain is homeostasis and the temperature is your perceived identity.
So, you guessed it, you move too far below your normal which in my example would be really grotty, like leaving a tea on your bedside table to mold for 2 weeks. Your brain will hit a point where it goes “Right! Enough is enough, this is too messy EVEN FOR YOU. Get yourself together and take the tea out of your room and my god, at least make an effort to tidy a little”. So you do, and that’s the great thing about your identity thermostat. But as you can imagine, this also works in the other direction. As hard as you try to be the clean, neat, and tidy person, your brain is going to try equally hard to pull you back down to your moderately messy self, like the moldy tea version, the tidy version of you may last for 2 weeks even a month, but your brain will find a way to get its homeostasis.
Now you’re thinking (I hope), but this can’t be it, people make lasting changes all the time. You would be absolutely right. But they make a fundamental identity shift and that takes some serious work. Detour over.
Is your identity holding you back?
Now back to little Carla starting to become seriously competitive in gymnastics at the age of 8 and into her teen years. I progressed enough to do things that didn’t push too far outside my comfort zone, which really was me staying within the confines of my identity. I won many competitions and continued to move up the levels until I started having some serious fears. Now that I was at the point where my sporting career could grow exponentially, I couldn’t seem to get my head around some movements my body was more than capable of doing. My brain just wouldn’t allow it. Getting lost in skills or just completely not going for them, I began to walk into every training session miserable before even touching a piece of equipment.
Little did I know I would struggle with what gymnasts call a mental block until I was 23 years old. I didn’t understand the cause, so I felt there was nothing that could be done other than just wait it out. Take advice with a good sentiment like ‘Just do it’. I felt useless. But I knew I loved the sport, and I knew I was a fighter (the perceived identity traits that kept me from walking away). Lots of learning in my 23rd year of life led me to my understanding of what was really going on with me and reflecting now by writing this gives me even further insight.
I had started to have these fears when success was a possibility, I never believed I fit the athlete mindset mold.
I was, after all, the non-disciplined, messy, and disorganized child of the family, the disruptive kid in class that had so much ‘potential’. So I thought ‘I don’t have the athlete qualities’, and it’s easier to sit in that reality than the scary reality of if you were to give this your everything and fail and prove that your worst fears were right, you weren’t good enough.
My identity thermostat was putting a roadblock in front of how much I could succeed.
When I realized I had been proving my own theory that ‘I’m an athlete that struggles with mental blocks’ and that ‘I’m not good enough to excel at this sport’ and worse that I had so much ‘potential’, I thought it was too late. I had been crying at every single training session, letting my uni work take a back seat and feeling this insecurity about myself that crept into friendships, relationships, and all aspects of life. But again, I was a fighter and I loved the sport so I started searching for answers.
Start learning about your desired identity
I began by doing some reading and trying to understand WTF was going on with my brain and why couldn’t I go for a skill that I am more than physically capable of. With some research, I found a recording of a whole 24-week university course on audible called The Psychology of Performance. Listening to it twice and writing notes like crazy, I studied closely what the athlete mindset was and what traits were required. I still didn’t have them, but I at least knew more specifically what they were. I then read a book called Sportsmind that really shifted my understanding further into actionable steps. Then finally in January 2022, I attended a Tony Robbins course that amalgamated all of this information into the perfect easy steps for me.
Two basic tools to shift your identity
Now, I will go into the ‘how to’ actually make an identity shift in another post (Well, how I did it, which isn’t the only way but might be a good starting point for someone looking). I will, however, give you the two basic tools that began to change my identity and change my life.
1. The biggest shift I made in all of this was my physiological state. I did whatever I had to do to show up in a high-energy, happy state to training. It was a must that my body had to feel energized and electrified, down to my cells. I blasted music, I shouted affirmations, I moved my body, and I kept a mantra in my mind ‘If you can’t, you must. If you must, you can!’.
Just this alone totally changed the way I felt at training. The bad days aren’t so bad if you’re in a good mood and the good days are more likely to come if you’re not walking into training pre-game sobbing.
2. The next part was about changing the temperature on my thermostat. So if your brain is always trying to prove a theory to form your identity, why don’t you give it a new theory ‘I always go for skill x when I’m training’ for example? Now, this is where you cannot just say an affirmation and hope for the best. You have to work your ass off to collect undeniable evidence that you are who that affirmation and new identity theory says you are.
You must believe it with all of your being, even on the hard days. Now if this means you start with something slightly easier than the big goal that’s okay, but it MUST be outside of your comfort zone. The more you push outside of your comfort zone, the more your confidence and self-esteem improve because you’re consistently showing your brain that the things you thought you couldn’t do, you’re doing.
The more you push outside of your comfort zone the more your confidence and self-esteem improve because you’re consistently showing your brain that the things you thought you couldn’t do, you’re doing. Keep collecting your evidence until you have enough for your brain to know undoubtedly that you are this upgraded version, you are a different person. See, I told you earlier, it really is all a matter of perception. You don’t have to be a competitive athlete to realize – everyone dances with their identity.
More coming soon…
Now, I’m going to leave it there as this has already been long. But I will certainly be delving into tools to continue to foster a positive and lasting identity shift in posts to come. Leave a comment about your experience with identity and/or share it with someone who might benefit from unleashing the power of their identity!