Taking Control of Identity- Taking Back Your Authority

"Our identities are the cornerstones to the system of our mind. Without a clear sense of who we are, we cannot effectively navigate the complexities of life or understand our relationships to everything around us." (Turning Within)

Understanding your identity begins with acknowledging the 'I am' at its core. This is where you stand, where your journey of self-discovery begins.
Spiral Dynamics🌪️, Human Needs Psychology, 16 Levels of Consciousness, the Enneagram, DISC, and Archetypes are all tools for understanding how identity impacts our experience. Some are more complex, but they all refer to how we identify with and orient our experience in our reality.

This facet of reality is the cornerstone to orienting to our world. Without having an “I am,” you lose the ability to navigate 🧭 meaning. Look at your subjective experience of the story 📜 called you. All of the meaning you find meaningful (haha). Most of our identity is automatic and, therefore, unconscious.

First, don't make the mistake of thinking you only have one I 👁️ in you. Full-on #Dadmode 👨‍🍼 looks a lot different than many of the other identities that I live out of. Each one carries a different way of identifying with the stories and information that are flowing all around me.

Most people become increasingly set in their ways because creating new meaning out of the meaning already made is how the ocean 🌊 of meaning we operate out of is held together. Without a starting point 📍, we don't have a reference point for the following meaning. This is how we 'jump to a conclusion.' But new thought is more expensive than already made thought. Meaning made is never wasted. The great never-ending story 📚—echoing incomplete, unconscious, and never-ending conclusions over and over 🔄. 

But every hero 🦸‍♂️ (in every story) starts out as a victim 😵. Remember that. Change your identity, change the story. Change your story, change your life. By learning to shift our awareness and cultivate our lives from the higher identities, we regain the ability to live a life instead of just survive it. 

 "Our identity is the lens through which we interpret our reality. By examining and understanding the stories we tell ourselves, we gain the power to reshape our experiences and transform our lives." -Turning Within 

Shadow Work is strategic contemplation. It is diving into the programming driving the surface experience called life. Our strategic contemplation today will be on the Identity Facet of your experience of reality. 

The easiest way to teach identity is to have you briefly tune into your internal landscape and see how you are orienting your awareness. Take a moment to observe the narrative running in your mind. Notice its flow 🌊. Anger 😡 has a different rhythm than joy 😂. A narrative filled with suffering has a different impact than one focusing on well-being. Notice the 'flavor' of the narrative. This is the power of your internal narrative flowing from the perspective of your identity.

Take some time today to notice the identities you unconsciously inhabit. How much of your suffering comes from programming that was unconsciously adopted and not consciously cultivated?

• What is the identity that would experience the world the way you do? 
• Where did you pick up that this is the only way you can live?
• What would the highest version of you do in a moment like this?

"The strongest force in the human personality is the need to stay consistent in how we define ourselves." 🔍-Tony Robbins What he's eluding to is our identity. It's one of the 7 facets of the construct of reality 🌌 you operate out of. By understanding how identity influences and supports your reality experience, you regain the agency to change your story.

When you are ready to make the unconscious, conscious...