Identity Versus Personality And How Alignment Changes Everything

You can live your whole life pecking at the ground and still be an eagle. 

That's the uncomfortable question at the center of this one. We unpack an old parable about an eagle raised in a chicken coop, and then trace how the exact same thing happens to us, quietly, through conditioning and culture and the roles we learn to play before we're old enough to question them.

We get into the real difference between identity and personality, identity being the core of who you actually are, personality being the mask you've been wearing so long you forgot it wasn't your face. And we talk about what living out of alignment actually feels like, not in a clinical way, but in a "why am I so tired and nothing is wrong" kind of way. That restlessness that sleep doesn't fix. The nagging sense that something important is going unlived.

We also talk about the moment the mask cracks. That midlife look-up when you catch a glimpse of what you're actually capable of and you can't unsee it. What that moment asks of you. Why it's terrifying. Why it matters anyway.

And then we talk about how to be in alignment with who you really are by using desire as a compass, letting go as the actual work, and a few honest questions worth sitting with: Is the fear in your body expansive or constrictive? Is your drive about performance or resonance? Does the thought of doing the thing make you feel more alive than scared?

If something in your life has been feeling too small lately, this one's for you.

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Identity Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to We Playful Out with Bart and Sonny Miller. Sonny, I'm really excited about this section. Take it away.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Thank you, Bart. I was just thinking how much I enjoy our conversations.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Me too. That's why we do it. It gives us time to be together and create something magical. Yeah.

The Eagle Raised As A Chicken

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Okay, I'm going to tell a little story about a man who found an eagle's egg and put the egg in the nest of a barnyard hen.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Okay.

Identity Versus Behavior And Perception

SPEAKER_01 0:29

The eaglet hatched with the bird of chickens and grew up with them. So all of his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled and he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet in the air. Years passed and the eagle grew older, and one day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings. Of course, the old eagle looked up in awe and said, Who is that? You know, feeling probably like his breath was taken away from him with all this majesty. And his rather neighborly no-doll chicken next to him said, That's the eagle, the king of the birds. He belongs to the sky, we belong to the earth, we're chickens. And so the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that's what he thought he was. Now, Bart, if an eagle lives its life exactly like a chicken, would it really be an eagle or is it actually a chicken? Like, does the way it shows up in the world trump what it actually is?

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Well, the answer is no, because that's what it is. It's like the DNA, the everything of that. So it has to be that.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Yes, I would say it's simply living out of alignment with its identity.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

100%.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

So next question.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

And it's reality.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

And its reality. Yep. Um, let's let's go a little deeper. If an eagle lived its life as a chicken, does it really matter if it was an eagle at all?

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Depends on who's asking. If it's asking the chickens, probably not. If it's asking the eagles, yes.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Good point. I would say yes, it matters because the potential to fly was always there, even if it was unused. Okay, last one. What about perception? If all the little Barney chickens surrounding him viewed him as a chicken, even though they clearly knew what an eagle looked like, what does that tell you about life? Does that still make him more of a chicken than an actual eagle?

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Well, no.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

What?

SPEAKER_00 2:52

No.

Why Entrepreneurs Keep Talking Identity

SPEAKER_01 2:53

No. Perception doesn't alter identity, it just alters behaviors. This is so good, isn't it? So good. Love it. Okay. Well, the last inner circle meeting we went to, almost all of the entrepreneur-led presentations were surrounding identity. We heard things like I had to change my identity from this to this in order to succeed the way I wanted to. I would say at least three-quarters of the presentations, if not more, touched on identity. And just to give context, this is a tactics and strategies type of group. Group. This is not an identity type of group.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

So it was quite shocking to us.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm trying to like give context here because it's not the normal.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

No, it was the first time I in all the eight years of being in a circle that I'd ever seen it happen.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Yeah. And you know, no one seems to quite understand identity all the way, but most people who are, you know, personal development minded maybe have grasped it as a key lever point in life.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

A lot of them, you know, just say st you step into the identity if you you want to become, and then everything is just supposed to fall in line, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:05

I wish, but keep going.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

That's the magic pill.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Yeah. Right.

Expression Changes More Than Identity

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Well, I've been thinking a lot about this. So um this will be a fun discussion for us about what identity is and isn't. And I feel like I've kind of switched gears just a tiny bit. Okay. Um so again, we're told repeatedly that we can change our identity. But it seems to me that identity doesn't change at all. It's like an eagle. Can an eagle just like change his identity to be a horse? Right. Right? Doesn't really make sense. Yeah. Um, but what can change is our our expression of it. An eagle could act like a horse.

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Right.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

That doesn't change its identity.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Well, that's what we always talk about in our programs. So let's just go back to when I when I teach this, my perspective of it is is, and I use this analogy in it. So I hope it it's you know helps with this. But like, you know, let's take an I'll pick on um a guy, and he dresses up like a woman because it's Halloween and decides to walk out as a woman, right? So he walks out and uh instantly he's posing, he's doing all these things, he's having all this fun.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

He's flipping his hair, his hair, yeah, moving his hair.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Everybody's laughing, everybody's like um crazy about it. And uh then they, you know, like we but I guess where I'm trying to go here is is that nobody cares. So therefore, you can just have fun.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

It's like a safe thing to do, is what you're trying to say.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

But guess what? That still is the same person, and that still lived inside of them, regardless if it just happened to be Halloween. And so that's the interesting part about us as humanity is a lot of times we're just afraid to be us at our full potential in so many different ways. And I'm not saying you have to go dress up like a girl, and I'm not saying that all the trans, and I'm not referring to anything. I'm just really wanting to say that in our program, I always teach everybody that everything lies inside of you. But sometimes what you've got to do is you've got to step into a different environment and a different way to do it so that you can get so like for me when I became a cyclist, totally opposite from where I came from as a cowboy. Tight spandex, little tiny, you know, all the things were so different for me. But as soon as I stepped into the culture, everything was fine. Now, if I would have worn that to a rodeo, it'd have been a totally different experience for me. You know, but did I, did my identity change or did I change? And the answer is, you know, the identity and how I was showing up is what changed for me because of the environment that I put myself in and allowed myself to step into that. So I hope this is making sense to you as a listener. But as you start down this path, the interesting part is that we have so many things that lay inside of us, just like the eagle that we don't realize. And so we don't even try because we're trapped in what we think is us.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Yeah, and I love the way that you said all that because I do want to touch on a lot of that. What I what I love about what you're saying is, especially with the Halloween analogy, is you know what, sometimes like it's just fun to play.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

We need to.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

It's like what, and we're gonna get into this a little bit more, so maybe I'll I'll wait a second.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Yeah. But it's like playing with our personality, yeah, because it's it's just a reality that we're creating for ourselves no matter what it is.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Yeah. Okay, so I'm gonna step back just a second, then we're gonna come back to that again because I really, really like it.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Okay, so um I kind of left with identity, isn't doesn't change, but what changes is our expression of it.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

So what I'm thinking is identity is the essence of who you are when you first arrive in the world. So it's the you before the wounds, the stories, and the borrowed beliefs begin to settle in. So it's like the eaglet inside of you is born with wings, even if you've never used them yet.

SPEAKER_02 8:09

That's right. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

But from that point forward, we're introduced to the big old chicken coop of the world.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

And we absorb and repeat the behaviors our environment teaches us.

SPEAKER_02 8:19

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

We start to call that our identity. Yep. But in reality, it's a mask that is better known as personality. That personality mask becomes our entire perspective on life as we know who we are, what we believe about ourselves, how the world is going to treat us, how we should act, how we, you know, what, how we're gonna behave, and so on. It's flexible. I mean, we've heard personality isn't permanent. I mean, I have a totally different personality than I did like a couple years ago, right? 100%. But in my mind, I have the same one, which is fascinating. Yeah. So it is flexible and it's shaped by our environment, just like you said. But we become so invested in the mask that we insist it's who we are. Sometimes we're even willing to die believing it.

SPEAKER_02 9:05

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

But that's not our identity, it's simply how we're expressing it into the world.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

And most of that time that expression is out of alignment with who we really are. And we know what misalignment costs us in this life, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:20

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

We have chronic stress, you know, like living at the baseline fight or fight without even realizing it. Fatigue that sleep doesn't fix, maybe a low grade restlessness, like there's some part of our life that is being unlived and we can't like quite get a hold of it or whatever it might be. Like um, and sometimes dis-ease in the body, some symptoms will start appearing or all kinds of things like that.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

Yep.

Midlife Awakening And Inner Power

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Um but here's where the eagle story could have changed, and this is kind of where we're bridging the gap into the personalities and all the things here. I believe the eagle was in his midlife when he looked up into the sky and started questioning what that big, beautiful, magnificent bird was up there. He saw what he was meant to be. He had the opportunity in that moment to feel the pull of his true identity and answer it. I would call that an awakening.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Yeah, 100% awakening. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

So the eagle was born with wings and an instinct to fly, and those instincts would never survive. Staying inside a coop, pepping, pecking around at the ground all day. Um, that eagle would feel the urge to spread its wings, to fly, to hunt, and to live high above the ground. Yep. And that's what happens to us too. Yep. I think there's some point that comes, and it's usually in midlife for some reason. We look up and we see who we really are. Something calls from deep inside of us. It's our instinctual essence, just like the eagle has an instinct to fly, we have instincts to do something.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

Well, I'm just gonna stop you for a second because this is driving me crazy. And the fact of, you know, if you believe in a higher power and you believe that you came from a higher power, then you are the higher power. And there's so many people that want to argue with this and you know, go back and forth, and that's fine. But at the end of the day, if you are the higher power and you come from a higher power, you're gonna want to be and act just like the higher power. And that that is a that is a cool thing for humanity to get their heads wrapped around is yeah, we are all powerful just like what we came from. We just have to be mentored into it and have the awakening and say, No, I don't need anything else. I am it. I am it, I am the eagle, I have the wings, yeah. And so it's like another eagle saying, Well, I'm superior because I'm an eagle. No, I'm an eagle, you know? It's like no superiority, you are what you are, and that's it.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Yeah, I love it. So like yes, 1000%. Take a little bit further, like so an eagle has instincts, a dog has different instincts, a horse has different instincts.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

I think we as humans also have different instincts.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

We do.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Um, some might be to teach, some might be to heal, some might be to create, some might be just to hold space. But there's something inside of us that is instinctually pulling it forward, and that's how our identity makes itself known to the world. Yep. Isn't that awesome?

SPEAKER_00 12:21

That's really cool.

When The Body Forces A Wake Up

SPEAKER_01 12:22

So when the personality mask begins to crack, we start to see the wings we've never used. Now, in my particular case, I still remember the day that I was singing for a church function in the evening for a group of women. I was playing the piano and singing Angels Among Us, and my voice felt tight. And at the time, like I kind of felt a foreboding energy, but I kind of pushed it aside like whatever, probably just not feeling good. Um, obviously, it proved to be that foreboding energy was accurate, and my voice got tighter and tighter, and then sure enough, my singing voice became silent. That is when my mask cracked, and I had to look up and say, What is going on here? Yeah. And my instinctual nature was saying, No, like you are not in alignment, and you're here to do something, and you need to change that.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

It's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

So sometimes those are the types of things that will happen.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Well, sometimes we have to have the disease to make us absolutely wake up. And there's always a point where our um our human body is gonna wake us up to what the energetic system is that's inside of it of consciousness of some sort.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Yeah, and not everybody has to go to the extreme of body symptoms like I did.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

I hope not, but I find it a very, very high percentage do.

Desire As A Compass And Letting Go

SPEAKER_01 13:47

Yeah, and if if nothing else, you'll most likely what I'm finding is your nervous system will be dysregulated and you you don't realize it. Yeah. You know, I've been seeing a lot of posts about that lately. Yeah. So, you know, you'll feel an urgent, deep, sometimes terrifying pull towards something we can't quite name, but can't quite ignore either. And that is again us, our identity, our essence, instinctually wanting to use those wings that we have. So the path to true identity, it's not about adding more. It never is. It's about letting go.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

So you've got to let go of the mask of the stories and of the fears that keep you grounded in the barnyard. And when we finally let go of who we've been performing as and start to see ourselves for who we are, our expression then can shift into full alignment. That's when you're gonna live life feeling fully alive, fully awake, fully on purpose, simply because you're in alignment. Um, for me, a compass for maybe finding or discovering what that is for you is desire. Like if you have a desire, like maybe to speak on stage or to heal or to sing or to build or whatever it is, that's probably your identity calling you forward. And I don't fully understand this all the way yet, but for some reason we're fearful of following that path.

Watch Your Game Tape In Stillness

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if this story relates here. So I'm gonna I hope it does. In my mind, it does, but I hope it relates. But like I remember learning at this one time, it was like, how are masters built, right? So if I find something about myself and this and that and the other, how do I how do I find potential or whatever it is? And when I was learning this, it was very evident in high performance people. So let's say that I'm a high performer and pickleball, what and I'm gonna play somebody else, or I'm gonna do something else. I will go out there and I can play so many games. I can play games all the time, but I never become a master until I sit down and watch game tape. I have to watch game tape over and over. That's why football players watch so much game tape.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Basketball players are kind of the same as practicing the piano and listening to masters play.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Yeah, it's very similar to that. And what I'm what I'm what I'm trying to get across the bridge here, if so everybody catches on, is that what we've got to do is sit with ourselves. You gotta be quiet with yourself, and you gotta listen to the game tape. And that's what I'm trying to do. You've got to be able to say, why is this showing up? And not just go out and play games and try to figure it out. You've got to be still, you've got to be conscious of just being there and saying, what is it that's pulling me here? And is it my true identity? And when we sit with that, that's the game tape we're able to play and say, now what do you want me to do with it? How do you want me to express it? So for you, maybe expression of the voice was singing, but what your body really wanted was to tell fairy tales, right? Same voice, but how you used it wasn't the way that the universe maybe. I'm not saying this is true for you at all. Right. I'm just saying maybe it's how, but we need to stay, we need to stay with ourselves and say, you, yeah, Sonny. When you if you ever get to hear Sonny sing, I encourage you to. And she's got some recordings that are absolutely just unbelievable, right? And she has such a unique voice that once you hear it, you won't unhear it. That's what was so amazing. But also, she has that same thing in fairy tales, right? So it still lives there, it's just expressed in a different way, but that's allowing ourselves to be still enough to watch the game tape. I hope that tied together, but I love that.

Try New Lanes To Find Potential

SPEAKER_01 17:40

And that brought me back to personality, which I forgot to come back to. And it's like the expression piece, right?

SPEAKER_02 17:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

Well, why not try singing? Why not try fairy tales? Why not try, you know, I think we get so stuck in this is who I am. And I I mean, obviously, you're a good example of this. We've talked about it before, like bodybuilding, team roping, um, all the things you've done that you're not afraid to step into, but at the core, it's your identity. You're just expressing it differently in different ways.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

100%.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

And why not have fun with it? I sure try to go and do and experience life and like try different things to see. Like, why not?

SPEAKER_00 18:18

Why not have those expressions? What's interesting about that? And we use this analogy before, but like, you know, you take Dozer, we had this amazing bulldog, right? And he was always around. He was like, I mean, honestly, you could take any little baby and stick them on him, and he would just cuddle them and just I he was the kindest dog ever. Never saw an aggressive bone in this dog's body until one day we took him out to the cows.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

And a beast lit up. And I mean when I say a beast, like you wouldn't even know this was the same dog.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Yet he'd walk in the house, lay down, little baby right there, and he was just like, fine. Yet you took him out to a cow and he was a ferocious beast, right? And so what if he would have never actually got to experience that in life, right? He would have never found a part of his potential that was laying inside of him and so wanting to be expressed that I felt bad that I didn't take him out there earlier.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, try things, it's fun.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

It is fun. I love it.

Fear Signals Mentors And First Attempts

SPEAKER_01 19:24

I'm gonna go back to the fear thing just a little bit because it can be scary. And you know, um, anytime you try something new or try to step into a different lane, I mean, there's so much out there that just makes you feel like you shouldn't. Yeah. And I think part of that might be our own fear because we're exposing our real self for the first time and it's scary. Yeah. But if I go back to the eagle analogy, when a little bird first learns to fly, its wings are gonna shake.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

And they grow stronger the more you use them. So it's like just start to use it.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

Well, and no, and no, the fear is it's just your conscious, but also the fear is that there are gonna be people there that are gonna want to help you, and that's the ones you want to align yourself with because they're always gonna be there to mentor, help you get there. But at first, it's really scary because you're always comparing yourself to somebody else, and you can't go there comparing yourself but to you, and then step in and just let it grow. And I've done this multiple times in multiple different ecosystems to prove this to be true. But it is it's very intimidating at the very beginning. I mean, if Sonny pulled up the picture of me in bodybuilding the first time at this gym, I mean, take your shirt off, and you know, if you don't know the story, we'll tell it later. But like, I was not a bodybuilder at that time, and all these guys were jacked, you know, but I did it, and I did it pro-level jacked. Yeah, but I did it anyway, knowing that that's what I was gonna become, and that's okay. Yeah, and then I just stepped into that identity that I was it.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

Yeah, I love that, and you know, um, with fear, there's like different things you can again sit with yourself and get real with. One is just ask yourself, does this fear feel expansive or constrictive in my body? Because if it's expansive, it's like, yes, that's the way you should go. The next is does my desire feel like performance or resonance? So going back to what you just said, it's like if I'm there to perform and to look good in front of people, it's a totally different ball game than if it resonates with me. And if it resonates with me, then I'm gonna be magnetic for people. It's almost not even gonna matter what I say as long as I'm like speaking truth or performing or whatever it is with a resonance in my body. It's a beautiful thing. It's awesome. And the last one is does the thought of doing it make me feel more alive than it does scared? All those systems are a go, like go, go, go, go, go. Like you will, you will really live a fulfilled life.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

You will, for sure. And I think sometimes the first time makes you question it a lot. Lot just FYI. So give yourself a few times to be in it and then retouch with your body and then check all signals.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

That's a good idea because you know, obviously going back to the first time you do something is not always gonna be the best time. Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

That's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

I mean, I I not um Sander just performed at State Solo and he did a phenomenal job. Yeah, he didn't take first, he took third.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

And he could sit back and look at that and go, Oh, I'm never gonna do that again. I didn't get first place, rah rah, rah, rah. Or it's like, hey, I learned from this. I'm gonna step into it because this is what I'm called to do.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna express my way no matter what. And I'm here for what the what it is, the music, not for the accolade.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

You know?

Use Your Wings And Closing Requests

SPEAKER_01 22:42

Yep. Okay, so everyone is born into this world with a unique identity. The question is not whether you have wings, the question is whether you'll remember to use them.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

Yeah. And we challenge you to use them.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

Awake, awaken if you haven't awakened to that fact yet.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Let's go. So good. Great job today. So are we wrapping up right there?

SPEAKER_01 23:01

We sure are.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

All right, you guys. Well, thank you for listening. We ask you that you'll give this five stars on whatever platform you're on. And if you could share it with somebody, it would mean a lot to Sunny Night. And if you have feedback, we would also love that.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

All right, we'll give you a great big kiss. Yikes.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

Let's do it. I guess you got to step into your fears. All right. With that, you guys, you're amazing. And uh, we are so once again grateful for you. And this segment brought to you by I Do Epic.