[28] Who we really are
One-Line Summary: Unconscious beliefs about ourselves built primarily during childhood can drive our life.
One Paragraph Summary:
There are two critical periods where our ego, personality or “fake identity” is built. These periods are our childhood and teens when our brain develops and changes. That´s when the brain is programmed with certain beliefs about who we are and what we can do. If we are not aware of these, they stay in our unconscious and drive most of our decisions and actions in our life. These periods can clearly define our destiny, in a foreseeable way, if we don´t do something about it. Also, these beliefs are reinforced if we stay in the environment where these beliefs were formed (e.g. family, culture, childhood friends, etc.), making any change even harder.
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“Whether You Believe You Can or You Can’t — You Are Right” Henry Ford
Brain and Identity development phases
As children, we didn´t have the choice to choose. We were the result of what we were exposed to.
We needed to conform and believe what others told us to believe in order to be nurtured, loved and accepted.
That´s where our programming started, our setup of how to see and interpret our environment.
That´s where our personality started to form. The idea and belief of who we are, and how we “should” act.
This is a critical period in our brain development.
“A critical period is a timeframe in which a certain part or network in the brain is more sensitive to adapt in response to a specific type of outside stimuli.”
Functions of higher cognition (e.g. Reading and math) develop throughout the late teens. Impulse control, social interactions, goal setting and mental flexibility also develop in the late teens (and beyond).
Who we think we are
To simplify things, we will consider three major facts that affect our identity.
First, depending on our nurturing environment we could have been raised (to simplify things) in an intrusive or neglectful environment (Hendrix, 1988).
Because of that, we experience anxiety, become self-absorbed, and develop elaborate defense systems to protect ourselves. Children (Hendrix, 1988):
Secondly, our teenager’s environment plays a big part in whom we believe we are. That´s the stage when we start learning to become “independent” and “free” from our caregiver’s influence and question some of their beliefs.
“Tell me with whom you associate, and I will tell you who you are” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Thirdly, our memory is very selective.
There is a big gap between everything we experience and what we remember. Our memory, our mind is set up to remember strong emotional events and withdrawn minor emotionally impacting events.
The Peak-End Rule states that people remember the most emotionally heightened moments and the final ones (Aaker & Bagdonas, 2021).
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So, what we believe (“remember”) is just a minor part of the entire picture, of the whole reality.
And from those three perspectives (childhood and teens´ environments and selective memory), we create a “bank of beliefs” about who we are. Which basically becomes our bible, “Our Reality of Who We Are”.
That includes everything about us (what we can do, what we are, what we can dream and achieve, etc.). And in many occasions, we believe that these are fixed character traits that we cannot change.
But that’s not true, of course.
Who we really are
We are much more than our beliefs and our past experiences.
We were not allowed to be our true selves when we were kids. We learn that certain aspects of ourselves were not allowed in our environment so we repressed them.
We become someone else, we play a “Social Role” to fit in.
And what happens, as we grow up, is that we feel something within ourselves that is constantly asking for our attention. We have an inner conflict.
That´s our essence, our inner child, or our real self. Basically, our most repressed natural parts of ourselves.
That is who we really are. Our whole self.
And in order to allow this part to flourish we need to be courageous and do things that are different from what we have been told are common and standard.
We need to rebel against every nonsense that feels is not in line with our truest and most pure parts of ourselves.
Then, we can become free, to express our whole self, our true nature.
And that´s when we experience congruence, we start trusting ourselves and developing our confidence. Because we now know that we act in our best interest as well as others.
We finally stop pretending to be ok, when we are not, to accept ourselves fully, our “dark” sides as well as our bright sides.
We accept reality as it is. We stop judging ourselves or others.
We stop conforming with the rest for the sake of being accepted, our valued.
We know we will be great if we love ourselves unconditionally and act as we feel is best for us and the world.
We live a life with no regrets or fewer regrets. We start to be fully alive.
And that´s what the world needs.
References and/or Recommended Resources:
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1yGreat article, Yoshi Garnica. It’s interesting to think about the conflicts within ourselves and only some people incorporate a growth mindset to question some of those beliefs. I also find it interesting, as a leader of teams, to appreciate the differences of the individuals in the team and how their state of personal growth can affect others around them and hence the team performance.
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1yExcellent article Yoshi Garnica !!