Investigating Identity with Colleen Stanevich

Welcome to 2021! As we kick off the new year, learning from last year, looking ahead to changes we seek to make, we often set resolutions or intentions for ourselves. But along with setting our goals, we have to honor the change process and start with our identity. What do we know about ourselves and our beliefs? If we use inquiry to lead us into self-reflection, we can start meeting our resolutions with greater clarity and self-awareness. 
Consider:

• How does your core identity (e.g. race, religion, language, ability, gender, age, class, sexual orientation) shape how you approach changing yourself and your habits?
• How does your family and cultural background shape how you approach changing yourself and your habits?
• How does your identity that you have grown through life experience shape how you approach changing yourself and your habits?

Doing the work of unpacking our identity is an essential part of the change process. If we understand ourselves better, we are more likely to unearth faulty assumptions and limiting beliefs that can keep us creating lasting, deeper change.

See the  Loden-Rosener graphic here.

Transcript

Welcome to 2021! The calendar page flipped and we’ll spend the next several weeks writing the wrong date on checks, but in some ways many things in our world feel the same. I’ve heard several people say, I’m not even setting resolutions this year, who knows what’s going to happen. And, I agree. I think 2020 taught all of us that we can have the best laid plans, but there are other variables in this world that impact our lives as well. Even before 2020 I had given up on resolutions and instead focused more on intentions—things like nourishing myself more intentionally, or cultivating greater curiosity, or nurturing my creativity.

However, New years is also a time to make concrete changes and 2020 shone a spotlight on our lives in a way that helped some of us see where we need to change—maybe in our relationships, maybe in our professional lives, maybe in our personal wellness. Every time January 1 rolls around it is an invitation to create change in the new year and chart a new course in our lives. 

So whether you are living in the realm of intentions or concrete goals for New Years, season 2 of the My Innermission podcast is going to focus on some of the global steps to creating lasting change no matter what change you seek—we’ll start with conversations around our identity—what do we know and believe about ourselves, what has shaped us in our lives and actions, what can we uncover about our true nature. Then, we’ll discuss the roles that we play in our lives and how those roles impact our current actions. We’ll question faulty assumptions about the roles we play, and consider the implications when roles dramatically shift and we have to adapt. Following that analysis, we’ll move on to conversations about purpose—how do we name our purpose, how can our purpose shift in life, how can we use our purpose to gain clarity on our path to change. Finally, we’ll talk about what it means to create the plan for change and to step into that plan with goals, support and grace.

Today we kick off the first part of Season 2—our focus on Identity. 

Thinking about identity, there are a lot of factors that shape who we are, how we see ourselves and how others see us. When we begin a process of change it is important to start with self-awareness and identify the beliefs and values that shape who we are as it relates to wanting to create change. For example, when I left my job in the realm of education, before I could consider what was next, I had to unpack my professional identity—what had drawn me towards education? What were the underlying beliefs about work? How did my family’s values in my childhood shape how I saw myself and what I did? What did I feel about my professional identity and position? How did all those factors influence how I see myself? How did the ways I saw myself align with who I wanted to be? Were the things I was telling myself about my identity true? Did they align with the way that others saw me? –Lots to consider and think about. And it can feel overwhelming. 

To kick off the next couple weeks of interviews about making meaning of our identity as the first step towards making change, I want to give us a framework for thinking about identity. It is based off of work by Marilyn Loden and Judy Rosener that uses a graphic to name the different dimensions of identity. They use it to frame their work in diversity, equity and inclusion by considering how our identities relate to our privilege and biases—creating social justice change. But when I think about my own experience with personal and professional change, as well as coaching others towards change, starting with their elements of identity serve as a strong framework.  

Our primary identities in this model, start with 8 dimensions that shape our internal identity—race, age, sexual orientation, gender, physical/mental ability, ethnicity, class, and religion. When we use these to think about the change we seek, we aren’t considering how to change these, but how our identity in this realm shapes our beliefs about ourselves, our lives, and our ability to create change. So, when I wanted to break out of unhealthy habits—sitting too much, not exercising enough, being overweight,  I asked myself some questions about my own beliefs regarding my core identity—What did I believe wellness and fitness looked like for a middle-aged woman? When I talked internally, or to others about my physical ability and my body, what were the messages I conveyed? What were my beliefs about what women’s bodies were supposed to look like?  When I asked these questions I found myself really uncovering some ugly truths about what I believed about changing my physical body. Sitting in those uncomfortable realizations helped me realize that there was bigger work to do—beyond just working out more. The questions obviously change based on what new mindsets, practices, or opportunities you are seeking, but if we take time to think about how our primary identities shape our beliefs and how we see ourselves, we can tap into some of the psychological barriers that hold us back.  It’s also important to note that the Loden-Rosener work helps people consider their privilege as their primary identities align with the dominant societal identity. This is also important to consider when thinking about change and opportunities for change. For me, as a white middle-class person without physical disability, who speaks the predominant language in the United States, the resources available to me and the avenues I have available to create physical fitness change are in line with the predominant societal messages. As a woman, there are predominant messages about what size of body is “healthy” in our society, and as someone who doesn’t fit that size, I have to find my own models and guidance outside of the mainstream messaging. So, using our primary identities to ask ourselves questions about what we believe in relation to the change we want to seek, helps us begin to unpack our identity.

The next layer is our family and external identity—duh-duh-duh! Our families instill in us another layer of our identities and how we see ourselves in relationship to others. This early experience helps us consider things like our gender roles, belief systems (even beyond religion), and communication styles. Using this layer of our identity can be a wild ride through childhood experiences, reliving family interactions, and analyzing interpersonal dynamics. However, it can also be an enlightening layer of identity analysis when we consider how the messages about what was important, how time should be spent, how conflict is handled, and what constitutes success and happiness. For me, when I was considering my professional change, I realized that some of what I was dealing with was the idea of stepping outside of the realm of education prompted feelings of grief because I came from a household of educators and had been brought up feeling like being in education was one of the most important jobs in our society. When I wanted to make that professional change, I realized that part of my identity came from the idea that my parents had always supported and encouraged my pursuit of being a teacher and I had always seen myself as an educator and stepping away from that career path felt out of alignment with values that I had felt from my childhood. I began asking myself questions—why was the field of education so valued in my family? Why did I feel valued in my role as educator? What were the underlying messages about the field of education that informed my choices? What skills did I develop in the field of education? How are my skills still valuable even if I step outside of education? This line of questioning can be painful and requires some honest reflection about where your beliefs stem from and how you continue to live into them intentionally or not. And my example is about values, but asking about your family’s communication styles and gender roles can be helpful in considering all kinds of personal and professional change—want to deepen your marriage—how does your own approach to conflict with your partner mirror what you saw in your family? Want to hold stronger boundaries for your personal time—how did you see your parents communicate their needs to each other or to others? How did people in your family ask for what they needed?

Finally, there is a layer of your identity that you weren’t born into, and wasn’t shaped by your family, but it is the life experiences and choices that you have gone through. Your jobs, your relationships, your education, even global events, have shaped how you see yourself and how you think others see you. For people considering a professional change, this layer of identity is an essential one to consider. How does your professional title shape your identity? How would changing your professional title impact how you see yourself or how you think others would see you? If considering a change in relationship, how does your identity change if you are no longer someone’s partner? What do you believe about how your relationship status communicates your worth or value? This layer was one of the hardest for me in my reflection, because I couldn’t fall back on—I was raised with this message, or I was born with this identity. Instead it was the values and beliefs that I had grown into and “owned” for myself. The flip of that is that I found that I could more easily name and identify my beliefs and values that shaped my identity. And—I could choose to challenge that part of my identity that I had created. So—the “worth” that I felt as being in a leadership role in my company—was my worth really going to go away if I changed jobs? How would I name what my worth was—what were the values that I thought other people valued about me? What was my identity in my marriage? How was that in line with what I wanted or not? How did my actions or communication approaches reinforce my identity in our marriage (for better or worse)?

 In asking these questions about identity, I encourage you not to give into the feelings of shame—“Why in the world do I think this about myself?” or “How did I let myself fall into this identity in my relationship?” instead think of it as building greater awareness—kinda like a muscle. You wouldn’t expect yourself to run a marathon off the couch. You’ve been living into these parts of your identity for a while—if not your whole life. If you are just now discovering them and unpacking all that they hold, be gentle with yourself and be proud that you are stepping into greater self-awareness that can lead to greater change—and longer lasting change. 

So, welcome to 2021. Whatever that means and holds for you. And as you step into new intentions or specific goals, take time to honor your layers of identity. Because by doing that work, you will unlock some of the underlying beliefs that may lead to greater success in the change you seek.  Coming up for the rest of this month, I’m going to talk to folks who have done some big identity work and how their own self-realization has led to changes in their lives and how they in turn help others create meaningful change. I look forward to having you join me in the coming weeks as we focus on Identity in the My Innermission p