Who are you? I mean, who are you really? Your identity is an offshoot of clarity. When you are first born, your identity is tied to your family, your parents. Then it becomes tied to school, or athletics or other extracurricular activities. And for you, in this stage of your life, it’s likely your career. For kids nowadays it’s often tied to your gender, or lack thereof, which will always be confusing, because identifying yourself with one part of who you are can never identify the whole YOU.
All these things tied to your identity are subsets, adjectives. That’s why there is so much confusion around identity, because we tie ourselves to one part of who we are. As a person of faith, every day I come closer to the realization that I am a child of God, and that’s my identity. Everything else falls away and really doesn’t matter.
Identity tied to ego is probably the greatest disease that plagues us today. It’s tied to our jobs, or how successful we are, or how nice our social media accounts look. Social media puts forward an (oftentimes false) image of success, and then we compare ourselves to that image. Comparison is a thief; it’s a whisperer of lies that you are not enough.
“Who are you” is an “I am” statement, not an “I do” statement
That comparison goes back to ego. Where do you get your worth? If it’s solely tied to your job, your profession, your skillset, your gender, your sexuality, your nationality, there is always going to be an empty spot because those are merely descriptions of parts of you. There will always be internal conflict.
Your real “who” is tied to your purpose, not your ego. That’s where my own purpose statement came from—to be a person of influence, not focused on my position. When I start focusing on position, I start wobbling because I’m focused on myself rather than helping others. That’s where my “why,” my purpose, really created clarity for me. It’s been a game changer.
Remember that “Who are you” is an “I am” statement, not an “I do” statement. Think about that. If your answer to “who are you” starts with “I do this, and this” or “I am [insert title]” instead of first and foremost being a person, that might be an indicator that you have some work to do in understanding who you are.
Activity is not an identity. When activity is your identity, you’re always chasing it, always busy, your life is haphazard and chaotic. That is the opposite of clarity. What happens to that identity when you can’t do that activity anymore, or you get fired? Like that friend who goes through a breakup and doesn’t know who they are anymore, because their entire identity was tied to that relationship, and now they’re lost and helpless. I believe not knowing who you are is the root of the rising rate of suicide today. If you don’t know who you are, you don’t have real purpose, and life becomes meaningless.
Identity stems from clarity, and creates purpose in your life. When you have purpose, it doesn’t matter what storm might be raging around you, you are more confident, secure and have a foundation that cannot be moved.