Overcoming Labels to Forge a New Self-Identity - 191

Battling cervical spine issues has been my unwelcome companion, a journey that's taught me about the nuances of identity and power. Today, I share insights with you, drawing parallels between personal health struggles and the broader quest for self-understanding. We wade into the emotional currents of identity, looking at how labels like 'expert' and 'victim' can define our interactions with the world and ourselves, and unpack the complexities of a 'winner/successful' mindset that might push us toward achievement at a potential personal cost.

This episode is a deep reflection on how past traumas, particularly ones as profound as childhood abuse, can root themselves in our psyche, dictating how we perceive and navigate our lives. We explore the balance between respecting expertise without undermining our autonomy and the crucial role of compassion in transcending the confines of a victim identity. Through personal anecdotes and client stories, we illustrate the importance of understanding the rules we subconsciously set for ourselves, and how they govern our actions and interactions.

As we dissect the intricate tapestry of the self, we also look at how a strong identity of success propelled my brother to professional heights while simultaneously trapping him in an unhealthy pattern. The conversation further navigates the delicate interplay of identity in corporate scenarios, using a client's vendor negotiation complexities as a case study. We aim to guide you toward a richer, more nuanced self-perception, inviting you to engage with our stories, share the episode, or simply reflect on the dialogues we present. Join us for a journey into the core of what makes us who we are.

Are you an executive, entrepreneur, or combat veteran looking to overcome subconscious blind spots and limiting messaging to unlock your highest performance? Feel free to reach out to Sean at Reload Coaching and Consulting.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to the Reload, where we help unconventional leaders craft the life they truly want by questioning the assumptions they have about how life works. My name is Sean and I'll be your host on this journey. As a performance coach and Special Operations Combat Veteran, I help high-performing executives kick-ass in their careers while connecting with deeply powerful insights that fuel their lives. All right, my fine folks and you are indeed fine folks, because you have chosen to listen to this podcast. What a great way to get started. Tons of positivity.

Speaker 1: 0:34

Now one potential disclaimer here. I have been dealing with some cervical spine issues, and that means that when I am trying to sleep at night, it feels like I have a screwdriver shoved into my neck. So my sleep has been a bit lackluster lately, and if today my thinking and my speech is a bit slow or maybe not as crisp as usual, I apologize in advance, but I've got my handy-dandy bullet point list in front of me and so hopefully I will be able to stay mostly on track. So let's dive in. What are we talking about today? Well, if you listened to last week's podcast, that was predominantly discussing where it is that healing can. Often the label of needing to be healed, I guess, is sometimes wrapped into pathologizing and these labels that are placed on individuals as being somehow abnormal. So a friend of mine and I were talking, and this was one of the observations that he had was hey, I have some feelings about the word healing being slapped over me or anyone else, as though if I'm dealing with something that's difficult, or if I have proverbial head trash that I'm carrying around with me, or if I'm stuck in some way in my life, that that should actually just be considered a normal part of the human process. So go ahead and listen to last week's episode, if you haven't, to have a little bit more context for today.

Speaker 1: 2:21

Based on the episode that I released last week, I got some feedback in the form of a couple of questions, and so the first question is is expert considered an identity in the same way that victim is considered an identity, and, if not, what are the material differences between them? Now, obviously, I am not the world's foremost expert on these distinctions, but in the years of coaching individuals and the years of researching this and having countless conversations about identity, there are some points that I think are worth highlighting and that, ultimately, I'm hoping are going to be useful for you in navigating your life. Now, when we look at this these two different labels, expert and victim at least in America, which is where I'm from when we hear those words, I think that for many individuals there is an instinctive response that one has power and the other one does not. And I don't think I'm stretching things too far there, because even if you look up the word victim in the dictionary, you're going to see that part of the definition includes having hardship put upon you. Now I'm going to spare you a trip to the dictionary today, although it pains me to do so, but when we think about somebody who is an expert, we typically envision someone that has a great deal of acumen, that has a great deal of experience and education and credentials, and that they are typically respected, well regarded, and often, if someone is an expert, they are someone who is towards the top of their field comparatively to other practitioners in that same field. So, relatively, I think it's easy to understand how they are in a position of power. Now, that may not be power in the form of I don't know a government leader, they may not be able to have you arrested, let's say but there is a form of power imbued in that person based on their expertise. Think about going to a doctor or going to a tax accountant who's going to explain to you the tax code, something that is, at least in this country, quite Byzantine. And so, as the layperson, we are in this power relationship with the expert.

Speaker 1: 5:16

However, one point that I think is worth highlighting here is that the layperson has to participate in that power relationship for the relationship to be present. There are individuals for instance, if we think about going to the doctor, there are individuals out there, patients out there, who, when a doctor gives them a diagnosis that they don't like, they dismiss the expert and they go seek a second or third, fourth, fifth opinion. And in some cases, with really stubborn people, when they keep getting answers they don't like because potentially the experts happen to agree on what the condition is, but the layperson, the patient in this case, disagrees. Well then, that power relationship isn't really holding sway over the layperson, the patient. So just because somebody is an expert doesn't necessarily mean that that power dynamic is actually going to play out, and I think that point is relevant, for what I want to talk about here just in a little bit is where it is that the victim identity is manifest itself in a way that imbues power in the counterparty.

Speaker 1: 6:48

But to look at the primary question is expert considered an identity in the same way that victim is? I think yes and no. The no part of my response is what I just talked about. I think there are tangible differences in the power relationship or the amount of power that is ingrained in the term expert versus victim. So I think that there is a meaningful difference there, but, yes, in terms of they're both identities.

Speaker 1: 7:24

So what is today's episode really about? Well, really, what we're talking about today is identity period and how do we better understand and then navigate identity? And if you want to think about it with a capital I, which oftentimes when I'm communicating with my clients, when I try to convey that I'm talking about sort of the meta concept or the macro concept, I will capitalize the word. So, instead of lowercase I identity, think of it as uppercase I identity. So we're going to dig into this notion of what is identity at large.

Speaker 1: 8:09

Now, before we dig into identity at large, one point that I want to continue to flesh out here is how we adopt our condition as one's identity, because really that's part of what last week's episode was digging into and the question that sparked last week's episode. So there are ways in which individuals can adopt their malady or their diagnosis or their condition as their identity, and the interesting thing for me is I've seen this play out in a couple main ways that are that seem conflicting but are actually connected to the same root issue. So the way that I try to convey this to individuals is one has the individual has sort of adopted the victim mindset, so they have a certain condition, let's. So one that's really common with both my clientele is that they are abused as children, and for some of my clients they have adopted a mindset of I was a victim of child abuse, and where they are stuck is that they have sort of latched on to that identity of child abuse victim, and the way that it's limiting them is that they are operating in a way that they constantly want people to feel sorry for them because of what they had to endure as a child. Now, to be clear, I'm not suggesting in any way that we should mock or belittle those individuals. That is absolutely not what I'm saying. I think that individuals that have received a great deal of harm, especially when they were children, should be shown a great deal of compassion and I not. But. So it's not either or but. And if somebody is operating constrained by their childhood experiences, if they're, if they're operating in a way that clearly has them limited from achieving what they want to achieve in their life and this obstacle of having latched on to the victim identity is standing in the way, then I think that it is quite positive for us to be able to try to help them navigate through that and to release the constraints of the victim identity.

Speaker 1: 11:04

Now, the flip side of that coin is I actually have more clients proportionally who have also been victims of child abuse, who, instead of adopting a victim mindset or latching on to that that identity, they they sorry, they latch on instead into a survivor identity. So, instead of the narrative being feel sorry for me because of what I've, what I've endured, the narrative instead is respect and admire me because of what I've endured. But they're still chained to the child abuse. Their identity is still built upon those, those early traumas. And the way that they are stuck differs in application and manifestation from the ones who are chained to the victim mindset.

Speaker 1: 12:09

The survivor mindset is often stuck in a can do, must do. Let's just get to tomorrow kind of way of being. They often fail to really truly acknowledge when they're hurting, because they had so many hardships when they were young that they would not allow themselves to acknowledge because they had to quote unquote, had to make it through that, that awful chapter in their life. And at least in American society, I think. Oftentimes the survivor identity gets more praise and especially with the clientele that I have, none of them want to acknowledge the victim identity. But that's the funny thing, the survivor identity, when, when we don't actually acknowledge where we're hurting, we tend not to engage any corrective measures and we don't ask for help. You know so frequently and I think I'm going to be doing another podcast episode on this shortly, we'll see but so many of my clients refuse to ask for help and it really screws them up and it also has knock on effects in their relationships and their business Because they become bottlenecks, they feel overwhelmed and even in the midst of their overwhelm they're still trying to just like bulldoze their way through things and the pressure just keeps mounting because they're not actually bringing inappropriate resources to to deal with the demand. So both victim mindset and survivor mindset can be ineffective and harmful.

Speaker 1: 14:02

It's not that one is necessarily better than the other, but in American culture we somehow glamorized being a survivor, and I understand why. Okay, I'm not that obtuse. We look back at our ancestry from an anthropological perspective. Humans had to endure a great deal of hardship, and so the ability to grind, the ability to push through, is admirable in certain ways, extremely admirable in certain ways. And between the two of them I more often lean towards survivor identity myself. The trick is trying to understand where that tipping point is. Where does virtue turn into vice, so to speak? Or tonic turns into toxin? You know, as they say, the poison is in the dose.

Speaker 1: 14:57

So, having kind of teed up this like larger question around identity, let's dig into what is identity Fundamentally, in just real, simple, basic terms. And so frequently, especially when I work with individuals, I don't think that we have to over complicate this stuff, and in fact I think we trip ourselves up when we over complicate things. My goal whenever I'm working with someone is to try to ask questions as simply as possible. I don't always succeed, and likewise when I'm doing these podcast episodes, I'm trying to convey concepts that sure can be highly complex and in many ways complicated, but trying to convey them in a way that's straightforward and as simple as possible. I think Einstein was quoted as saying things should be as simple as possible and no simpler. And that's the trick, right, because if you oversimplify, if you get into sort of a reductionist mindset, then we start to lose critical nuance. That affects our ability to actually understand the topic.

Speaker 1: 16:07

Now, if we look at identity, fundamentally it is the picture that one has of oneself, and so many things get wrapped into identity One's values, one's roles, one's lifestyle choices, one's purchasing decisions, one's selection of partner or partners man, woman, non-gendered, father, mother, wife, husband, vice president, christian, jew, muslim, white, black, hispanic, american, dutch, good person, loyal person, winner, loser, victim, expert and these are all ways in which we picture ourself, and it usually starts with the phrase I am dot dot dot. I am a good person, I am a Christian, I am a Muslim, I am a good team player, I am a good boss, I am an asshole, I mean, I've heard all these different things and more. And what's interesting about I am dot dot dot is, I think, this again sort of reductionist element of reducing ourself into singular traits. And what I mean by that is, if I say I am a good person. Well, somewhere in my head, heart and guts I have a composite picture of what good person means, and if I'm telling myself that I'm a good person and I have that backed up with certain criteria, well then it's all that much more important for me to be consistent. And if you've ever done any reading on cognitive dissonance, you would know that cognitive dissonance is when we start to recognize that there are perhaps some indicators in the way that we behave that don't conform to our sense of self, to our identity and that construction of I am in this case this example a good person. Well, the more that I buy into that and the less that I allow room for anomaly or different parts of myself to come forward, the more that I try to consolidate myself into one holistic, unified being instead of recognizing multiple parts, the stronger my reaction will be when I'm challenged with something that triggers cognitive dissonance. If I do something, maybe because I'm underslapped, maybe this thing that's been going on with my neck is making me a cranky fucker and I flare up at my wife Not that I've ever done that because I'm a good person she deserved it. You see what I did there. If we lock in on one identity and we don't allow ourselves the versatility and the adaptability to say I can be a good person, I have been a good person, I'm sure I will behave as a good person in the future. And, equally true, there are times when I have not acted like a good person. Then, if we're opening up the aperture there, if we're allowing ourselves to begin to recognize hi, yeah, I have this identity that I want to maintain and I recognize that there are times when I challenge that identity with my behavior.

Speaker 1: 20:36

A lot of my clients are team leaders and, in fact, many of them are CEOs, so they lead the whole company or the whole organization, and they like to consider themselves. One of their identities is I am a good boss. Well, one of the things that I hate to break to them is when I do a 360, I get a truckload of information from the people around them and specifically lower than them in the sort of pecking order that indicate yeah, maybe you're not as good a boss as you'd like to think. Maybe it's because when you are underslept or under a lot of stress, you yell physically at your team members or you denigrate them in some way, or perhaps you have double standards. There's hypocrisy in play. Ooh, do not get me started on how hypocrisy ruins a team. If you wanna torpedo your organization and if you are the top dog in that organization, you'll go ahead and you just start being a hypocrite.

Speaker 1: 21:56

So, when it comes to identity, one of the things that we have to, I think, map out is what are the identities to which you subscribe, and it's a really useful exercise. I'm pretty sure I've talked about it in a past episode, but I have no idea when that was. I'm guessing it was a year or two ago, something like that, so might as well bring it forward again, but this exercise is really useful. It can be very effective in helping us understand. Yeah, what is this picture of self? What are the different values, roles, essentially identities to which I subscribe? And then, for each one of those identity snapshots or slivers, what are the rules that come with it? Are you confused about the fact that identities come with rules? What does it mean to be a husband? What does it mean to be a wife? What does it mean to be a protector? Maybe, in your view, being a man means being a protector and a provider, or maybe those two things are somehow distinct in your mind, in your worldview. What does it mean to be a winner? What does it mean to be a loser? Because this can also be informative for the identities that we do not want.

Speaker 1: 23:36

So frequently I notice how people discuss and gravitate toward the things that they want, which makes sense and I think, intuitively, that's not hard to grasp. But often a lot of the progress comes in looking at the things that we're trying to shy away from. What are the labels that we want to shake or evade in some way? And that's really the power of getting a 360 done on you is you will hear people say things about you that you don't like. I mean, you won't hear it, but you'll get a report that says you know bad leader or whatever other label you don't want to hear. And it's in confronting those elements of quote, unquote bad news that we can actually make real progress in trying to understand. Okay, yeah, I like to think of myself, I like to view myself as this virtuous person, and yet the people around me are not seeing me that way, at least not all the time. And what are the key elements, or what are the key conditions that cause my lower selves to come forward and how might I address that?

Speaker 1: 25:11

So part of this is looking at what are the criteria that come with each identity, because oftentimes those criteria serve as limits to our behavior and they serve to guide our decision making, and in many ways they both help us in terms of motivating us, but then they also inhibit us at the same time. So perhaps it's useful for me to go through a bit of an example there. So, as a buddy of mine recently came into town and we're having dinner together and we ended up getting on the subject of his brother, who's also a friend of mine, and I think it's fair to say that the brother is in a marriage situation that is unconventional, to say the least, and I don't think I'd be stretching things too far to say that it's unhealthy. So we got on this topic and my friend, who is visiting, and I we were discussing the brother and kind of wondering what's keeping him connected, tied to this marriage, this marriage that, by all accounts, is pretty unhealthy, marriage that seems to cause the brother a great deal of suffering, and also a marriage where the partner doesn't really seem to engage or be willing to engage, in discussion about how to make it better. You know, and as a sort of tangential remark here, really, when we think about inner development and we think about crafting the life you truly want, you really only have two choices Change the outside or change the inside. And if you honestly cannot change the outside, the external factors, and in this case it being a relationship if the other party in the relationship refuses to talk about how to make it better, well, they have limited options available to you. Really, the only category of options that you have left is to change the inside, your internal response, and that can mean not letting it bother you. It can also mean saying, hey, this marriage is done and I'm going to cut away. Sorry, but I'm unwilling to waste more of my life on a relationship that is going nowhere. But that's not happening in this situation. Why is that?

Speaker 1: 28:18

Well, the brother who is in this unhealthy relationship has as part of his identity, framework and structure and identity of winner or successful and how that has motivated him and how that has benefited him. I mean because I try really hard to avoid discussions where we slap labels like good and bad. I think that that is reductionist and I think that ultimately it's ineffective in helping people understand the complexity of what they're dealing with. Again, trying to keep things simple, but, yeah, emotions can be very complex. Navigating one's emotions and navigating that against what one is trying to accomplish in one's life, yeah, sometimes that is a pretty complex situation, and so I try to avoid good and bad and I try to focus more on effective versus ineffective.

Speaker 1: 29:17

And so his identity composite of winner slash successful, among other things, obviously, but in this case we'll just zoom in on that as an example and so that's what motivated him in a very effective way, to be highly successful in multiple different career paths that he's had up to this point, and most recently, sort of a capstone event of having a very successful exit in terms of a company that he started where, you know, as part of the deal, he has monetary wealth that very few people on earth will achieve. And so he's just, he's set basically from a monetary perspective, and that winner slash successful identity has really served to push him and to motivate him and to cause him to reach for new heights in his professional endeavors. And you know, before he sustained a pretty serious injury in the military. He was also extremely fit, like shockingly fit. I could never, ever keep up with him.

Speaker 1: 30:31

So there are these certain ways, these certain manifestations in which that winner slash successful identity has been very, very useful and, dare I say, good Okay, for those of you who really, truly want to hear good or bad, but there are also ways in which I'm a winner or I'm successful has been inhibiting him. And to bring it back to this example of this unhealthy relationship in which he finds himself, a relationship where the partner has succeeded in effectively carving him away from his own family, because the partner has chosen certain ways of being and acting that are highly offensive to not just the brother's family but probably society at large, or at least a good chunk of society. And so there's, there's this rift that's been created, so there is real pain. I guess that the brother is feeling there's tension, there's exclusion. That's happening. Now it's not the brother's family that's trying to exclude him, but the brother knows that the family has real beef with the brother's partner. And so the brother finds himself in this position of, well, yeah, like it's.

Speaker 1: 32:11

Why would I, why would I bring my partner around when there's so much tension? And the result is that the brother tends not to communicate very much or very deeply, very freely, with his own family and for many of my listeners and many of my clients, they find themselves in a similar situation, where their own family members are individuals with whom they don't feel that they can connect on a deep level and in a vulnerable, open way, and for many of these individuals they suffer because of that. They wish that it wasn't so, but they can't figure out how to bridge that gulf. Now, looking at this sort of winner successful mindset that the brother maintains and the pain and the suffering that is coming with that mindset, that identity, to divorce the partner this is something that I was talking about with my friend To divorce the partner would be a sign of defeat. It would be in the brother's eyes. It would demonstrate that he hadn't won, he wasn't successful, that maybe he had done something wrong, and so he finds himself sort of trapped in this situation where the partner won't get serious about improving the relationship, but then the brother is also unwilling to end it because of this winner successful mindset.

Speaker 1: 34:12

And of course I don't want to skip over the obvious. There's probably still real emotional connection there as well. They have been more or less together for several years, and the reason I say it that way is because they don't actually live together and have not lived together for years, and there are times when they are in the same place, but, like I said, it's a very unconventional relationship. So I'm not trying to make light of the fact that there probably is still a significant amount of emotional attachment, but what I am trying to bring to the foreground is the ways in which our identity choices serve to either motivate us or inhibit us, and a lot of it comes down to those rules. So if you have a mindset of being a winner or being successful, what are the rules? What are the constraints that come with that? What are the defining criteria?

Speaker 1: 35:22

We think about a business example instead, and perhaps that's I don't know easier to wrap our minds around, because I'm currently coaching someone who is dealing with this situation. They have a vendor relationship that has become quite strained because the counterparty is making all kinds of demands, and so my client's company decided to come out with a strategy that hey, we'll give them our best offer up front. That way we're not playing games. They know that we're really truly giving them our best. They've had a relationship with them for a long time. They should trust that when we tell them that we're giving them our best that there really is and that we're trying to save everybody time and energy.

Speaker 1: 36:16

But the counterparty didn't accept it. And, in part, the speculation from my client is that the counterparty didn't accept it because they don't feel like they're winning. They feel like, well, there's no way that you could have come to me with your best offer right up front. There's no way, that's true, and I need to earn my win. And if you just hand it to me, I'm not winning because you just capitulated and I need to earn my win. And so, in this particular business negotiation, the counterparty has an expectation of what goes into winning a negotiation and to be handed the other side's best offer right out of the get-go. It does not compute for this particular counterparty. So, ultimately, in order to put this into practice, I think, going back to the exercise that I mentioned, write down what are the different identities to which you subscribe, and I would, I mean, you do what you want, but my recommendation is that you stick with the major ones. You stick with the ones that show up on a daily basis and if you want to go for extra credit, maybe there's one that doesn't show up on a daily basis but is one that shows up in really critical sort of emergency situations. And then, once you've written those down, write out the constraints or the criteria or the rules that come with each one of those identities what is off the table for you when you are connected to a certain identity.

Speaker 1: 38:18

You know, when I was a kid growing up in America, united States of America, just in case there's any confusion, one of the sayings that I was exposed to quite frequently as a child is real men don't cry. Real men don't cry. You don't want to be one of them. Sally boys, you want to be a real man. And it was delivered to me at an age where I don't know did I want to be a real man? As a young boy, questions of what constituted true masculinity were not things that were in my mind. I just wanted to ride my bike and hang out with my friends. But these slogans or these, these mottoes or these messages float in our environment and we we run into them, we get bombarded by them.

Speaker 1: 39:20

You know, for my clientele, I tend to predominantly deal with cisgender. You know, typically, you know identifying as man or woman clients and for many of them, many of the men they really subscribe to a protector, provider identity combo. What does that mean for you? What are the behaviors that go into that in order for you to be true to that identity? And for many of my female clients they subscribe to kind of a nurture, caretaker identity, which is challenging for them because many of them, in the corporate roles that they have, are saturated with more of a stereotypically masculine environment of protector, provider, eat what you kill kind of mindset. And so there's there's friction there. But in either case, you know right out your, right out your various identities, right out the rules that come with them, and then try to figure out how that has played out in your life. And, more importantly, where have you gone against the identities that you think you subscribe to? Because that is going to start to introduce elements of cognitive dissonance, elements of perhaps confirmation bias.

Speaker 1: 41:05

The example that I gave earlier in this episode, where if I'm underslapped and if I'm feeling like I have a screwdriver shoved into my neck because of some nerve pain from some disc bulges in my cervical spine and I end up being short tempered and I flare up at my wife, but I tell myself I'm a good person, I wouldn't do that unless I was justified. She deserved it. She pushed my button or she did this or she did that. If she had not done those things, then I would not have needed to flare up at her. So when we're looking at self justification, we're often introduced not always, but we're often introducing confirmation bias, we're often introducing self deceit. Now I haven't I haven't flared up this time.

Speaker 1: 42:11

I have flared up at her in the past and I have also done the self justification routine. Well, you know, I mean, if she, if she wouldn't have been so loud while I was trying to take a nap because I didn't sleep all last night, well then I wouldn't have had to snap at her. The reality is I didn't have to snap at her anyway, and the more that I can begin to recognize my own bullshit and say, oh yeah, you know, normally I like to consider myself a thoughtful, conscientious partner as one of my identities, and I can acknowledge that when I'm stressed out that I tend to lower myself into something more reactive and less congenial, and I recognize that that is also part of my identity, that I have a short tempered identity, mr, mr snappy pants or whatever, I don't know Well then it allows me to have a more inclusive awareness of my behavior and then I can start to recognize oh shit, yeah, okay. Okay, if, if I'm dealing with this neck thing because it might I mean quite legitimately right now it does feel like I have screwed over, screwed over, shoved in my neck, it sucks, so. So if I'm feeling physical pain and that physical pain has caused me to not get very good sleep for the last three weeks, what can I do?

Speaker 1: 43:44

If I, if I know that Mr snappy pants is going to be in the driver's seat, what can I do? Can I meditate more? Can I take a nap? Can I communicate proactively with my wife which thankfully I did, and I have learned to do this over previous, you know, poor experiences? Can I communicate proactively with my wife and say hey, you know, just heads up. I'm hurting right now physically and and my sleep sucks. And if I am short tempered, most likely it's not because of something that you did. And so if I do snap at you, I hope that you can keep in mind that it's not you and that you are collateral damage. I'm going to do my best not to do it, because now I'm highlighting that I'm more prone to it right now. I'm more sensitive. So I'm going to do my best to to keep that top of mind and curtail my own snappiness on the outside. But if it slips past me, please know that it's not you and I'm not trying to start a fight, and perhaps you can give me some grace that I'm clearly not giving myself.

Speaker 1: 44:59

So there are ways in which mapping out what these identities are looking for, areas where we have violated them or we've allowed their their antithesis to come forward, can really help us get ahead of potentially ineffective or or negative behavior manifestation.

Speaker 1: 45:26

Hopefully this episode wasn't too confusing for you. I really did try to follow the outline, but ultimately, what we're trying to get to here is a real, firm grasp on identity and understanding how identity shapes one's behavior, shapes one's worldview, and how can you get a more inclusive and comprehensive worldview that is more accurate, so that when you look at how power dynamics play out, where it is that your higher or lower self shows up to either make situations more effective or collaborative, versus blowing things up and then having to do rounds of apologies afterward, how is it that you can live your life better by having a better understanding of the sense of self's plural that you have inside of you. Hope this helps. And what else? What else? Ah yes, the old, give it a like, thumbs up, etc. Share or not, totally up to you. Until next time, take care of each other.