Identity can carve one’s life through behavior in both success and self-destruction. I believe what we have seen from the life examples of Puff Daddy (P-Diddy) and Tupac Shakur to Charles Manson and even Donald Trump are examples of the downside of how one’s identity can forge one’s life or at least significant aspects of it. In the example of Puff Daddy who I wrote about in my last blog, his father was a known gangster who was murdered in a drug deal gone bad, an identity and lifestyle he seemed to inherit from him despite having “gotten out” and achieved amazing success.
On the flip side in history are examples from Alexander the Great and Jesus Christ to the more modern examples of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, individuals who were given and/or held very strong identities that allowed them to not only flourish but make indelible marks on history.
The issue is that, for most of us, our identities were developed or inherited in our childhoods from our parents and/or others, when we often had little conscious say or discretion in the matter. That’s often that bad news. The good news is that we can change our identities, and what we identify with and who we identify as. We can choose an identity as powerful as Alexander the Great’s, who was told by his mother (as an example) that he was the biological son of the Greek God Zeus. This undeniably played a role in his astonishing victories over the Persian army, which at the time, was the greatest army in world history. Alexander’s forces defeated the Persians even being outnumbered in some cases 5 to 1.
It’s one of the most obvious characteristics I’ve noted in the most successful people I’ve worked with in the world and the least successful; it’s how the identified themselves, which becomes a self-feeding, self-perpetuating dynamic.
My recommendation is to spend some time taking note of how, who, and what you identify with and as. And if it’s not aligned with what it is you desire to create with your life, change it. You can do this through “I am” statements, through visualizations of yourself in meditation, and through journaling.
Might as well give it a shot, you never know, you might be the next one chosen to leave your mark in the history books.