Do you have identity flexibility? 3 questions to ask.

When we're rigid about 'this is who I am,' we miss out on who we still might be. Fighting this instinct matters as we age. Here's how.

Author photo: Jennifer Barrett, New Light Creative Services.

Warmup

• I’m really more of a big dog person.

• I am NOT a morning person.

• I don’t do meditation.

• I really don’t do subtitles in movies.

• I’m not athletic.

• I hate being cold and wet.

• I matter in this world mostly because of my job.

All of the above = beliefs I used to hold about my identity.

Today, not one of them is true. Here’s why.

Post

Recently I caught up with a former colleague from The Wall Street Journal, Anne Marie Chaker, who reached out to chat about exercising in the cold for her own newsletter, “Lift.”

(Spoiler alert: she hates the cold. I’m the weirdo who’s come to love it.)

You can read our conversation here.

We hadn’t spoken in more than a decade. Some things hadn’t changed about each of us: We both still love to write. She’s still has a wry sense of humor. I’m still not a good cook.

But other parts of our identities have profoundly shifted as we’ve entered our 50s. She’s become a professional bodybuilder. I’m now a competitive obstacle course racer in addition to my day job. We’ve both written books about this shift.

It got me thinking about the power of identity — and the inherent gifts that come with loosening our grip on ideas defining “this is who I am” and “this is who I am NOT.”

Or put another way: “These are the things I can do” and “these are the things I can’t do.”

What happens when we challenge those beliefs about who we are and instead embrace what we still might be?

How to cultivate identity flexibility

An important preface: There are parts of identity worth being rigid about.

Treating people fairly. Telling the truth. Trying to land on the side of good more than evil. Being a reliable parent, spouse or friend.

The trouble comes when we allow ourselves to become defined as humans by only what we’ve historically been good at. Or what people have paid or applauded us for. Or the roles we’ve always held.

Then when something goes awry — divorce, job upheaval, an injury, [insert life curveball here], if we aren’t flexible it can feel like our identity just evaporates.

Equally important, as we age there’s a tendency to begin believing we are fully-baked as people. And thus we miss out trying things that could bring us a new purpose, ignite our will to live and expose us to yet unreached corners of our capabilities.

Recently, the N2L community here inspired a 6-part series on how to make exercise non-negotiable. (Start here.)

I took some of those learnings and wrote a piece for The Washington Post. One additional concept explored in that article was how research indicates “identity” is a critical part of making positive new behaviors, habits, or pastimes stick. This comes from Chad Stecher, a behavioral health economist and an assistant professor at Arizona State University.

Being able to add new pieces to our identity requires cultivating identity flexibility.

Here are three questions that can help:

Question 1:

What do I want to be when I grow up?

My journey into the sport of obstacle course racing was launched when I overheard a man well into his gin ask this very question of a little girl at a dinner party.

I was 44-years-old at the time and had never felt strong or fast. “Athlete” was nowhere among the list of descriptors my family and friends used for me.

Or that I used for myself.

This moment was a catalyst for the most profound shift of my life. You can read about what happened next in my book NOT TOO LATE.

Keep asking yourself that question. At any age.

Question 2:

What am I intrinsically versus extrinsically motivated by?

It is tempting, naturally, to gravitate toward things where we receive immediate external (extrinsic) rewards, such as a paycheck, medals, praise, or gobs of digital thumbs ups and hearts.

Some of that is cool — and necessary.

But we’re more likely to find lasting fulfillment by investing some of our time capital into those things that bring us innate pleasure.

Jot down a list of what you’d love to be spending time doing if you had all the money in the world and no other worries or responsibilities.

Nope — you aren’t likely to ever be in that position. I’m certainly not.

But with some will, work and being merciless in letting go of other time sucks that aren’t getting you anywhere, you might be able to add at least one of those things to your life.

I have with obstacle course racing. And it’s now as core to my identity as any other moniker.

Question 3:

Have I recently tried the thing I think I’m not / can’t do / don’t like?

My parents always had big dogs. Golden Retrievers to be precise. My first dog was an amazing Golden named Dolly. Because that was all I’d ever known, I always told people: “I’m a big dog person.” Plus, I figured big dogs were tougher and could do more fun things like hike up mountains and go for a run.

Small dog people out there — trust me, I hear you. Hold on.

Then my father-in-law had a stroke. We needed to get on a plane to California. A lot. So we got a 20 lb. Cavapoo who could fly with us.

I NEVER imagined I would own anything that’s a “poo.”

Every single day this little creature has taught me how stupid and wrong I was. He climbs 1,250 of elevation without stopping. He can outrun me — and a lot of big dogs we encounter. And at night, he curls up on my stomach and gives a deep sigh before falling asleep. I think he’s perfect.

Now I just say: “I’m an animal person.”

Cooldown

If you’re interested in digging deeper on this concept here are some more tools and tactics for cultivating a flexible identity by Mark Manson, author of “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*uck.”

Thanks for reading N2Lers. As always, find something you love. (Maybe something you think you don’t love.) Dig in. Stick with it when things get hard.

Wendy