By Matata Mercy
One time we were having a conversation with a friend of mine who was working at a certain corporate company as it's Chief finance officer commonly known as CFO.
I asked him one fundamental and thought provoking question about what would happen to him if he lost his position as the chief finance officer of this prestigious company?
He was left silent and speechless. What happens when you lose the Identity that has defined you for all these years.
Truth be told, that can be a very terrible feeling for a human being who has defined himself as one thing.
For example, if you are a medical doctor working at a major hospital like John Hopkins hospital then you are used to being called Doctor Smith who works at John Hopkins hospital.
Now the most difficult question would be, what happens to Doctor Smith when he leaves John Hopkins hospital?
Some people live in denial and they do not want to accept the fact that the tides have changed and that they are no longer their old self.
They keep lamenting and cursing the world and how unfair it is.
But I do believe that accepting the truth is better and in the long run, it will help you to choose the right direction for your future.
Today, I would like to share with you some tips on how to deal with an identity crisis.
1.Keep your identity small.
If the only thing that you have is your identity, then when you lose it, you have nothing else to fall back to.
According to Paul Graham, the founder of ycombinator, you need to keep your identity small.
For example, if you are a chief technology officer at a certain company and that is all that you have been since you joined the world of work, what happens then when you lose your position at the company.
This simply means you have lost everything. By telling us to keep our identity small, Paul Graham is telling us not to make our identity all that we are.
In this case, who we are should be bigger than our identity. The things that we call ourselves should be a smaller part of who we truly are.
If you are a chief technology officer at a company, there is more about you other than that position that you hold.
This could be in form of your passions, your character or may be your spiritual beliefs.
2.Redefine yourself by keeping identity aspects intact.
One way of ensuring that any shift in your identity doesnot create a crisis for who you are is by defining yourself in such away that you are able to keep some elements or aspects of your identity intact.
For example, if you are the Chief executive officer of a certain company, you can decide to redefine your identity when asked who you are by saying that you are a kind of person who likes to build and create new things.
Or if you are an athlete, you can say you are a kind of person that loves tough mental and physical challenges.
When an identity is defined properly, it will just be like water that is actually flowing around an obstacle.
That identity will be flexible and overcome any stiff definitions. In the words of Lao Tzu, the soft and supple will prevail.
Everything is impermanent and life keeps changing, making our identities smaller than who we are is what we should do to beat identity crisis.
Good luck💪💪💪
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