You Cannot Build From a Broken Identity

A few weeks back at the Gorilla Mindset Seminar, it was suggested to me by an attendee (whose name unfortunately escapes me, despite remembering the gentleman very very clearly) that I study NLP and incorporate into my teaching. NLP=Neuro Linguistic Programming

I’d read some cursory info on NLP years back in high school, funny enough, but I d not recall it making that much of an impression. But I also thought I knew everything about everything in high school, so go figure.

That said, I started with the Introducing NLP this week, and blasted through the book. It has essentially been a systemized exploration of many ideas I’ve come to formulate regarding personality change, along with many other insights that are far beyond anything I’ve studied or come up.

So it’s reinforced my biases, if I was to be cynical, but it also made me appreciate that I am NOT that innovative of a thinker at all. Every new idea I think I have, I’ve been discovering someone else already wrote about far in the past.

I think I’m beginning to understand why Wisdom is realizing you know nothing. What you think you know is simply a continuation of a posteriori knowledge that came before you. I’ll be immensely happy to have one original idea before I die.

Anyways, to extract something useful, NLP can be said to operate from a general formula for creating change in people

NLP Structure of Change

1. Environment-this is your immediate surroundings. Where you are physically has the most immediate effect on all the other levels. Assuming control over your environment is a foundation for change. If you don’t do this, you’ll be in a war with your surroundings

2. Behaviors -How do you act? Actions reflect beliefs. You cannot begin changing beliefs without awareness first of how you act daily. How you behave is your beliefs manifest. Until you examine your behaviors, what you truly believe is likely unconscious to you

3. Intelligence/Capabilities-How do you think? What are your mental models? What are your perceptions?
This is a critical step. you cannot go deep into yourself if you are unwilling to confront your own modes of thinking. Your abilities & handicaps all exist here

4. Beliefs-Beyond intelligence, what are your concrete beliefs about yourself & the world? Do you have any? What is vague, what is defined? Self-limiting beliefs exist, so do self-empowering ones. Your strengths and insecurities exist at this level

5. Identity-Who are you? This is the question. Take away the external layers, how do you define yourself? WHAT has come to define, or what DID define you before? Is there a core to your being? Or are you just a shell, with no meaning to anything you do, other than modeling your environment and copying others?

6. Spirit/Mission/Purpose-This is your WHY. What do you exist for, what meaning gives meaning to your life? Spirit always has a religious substructure to it, regardless of whether you are a person of faith or not. Spirit is the roots that your life grows out of. What and why are you alive for?

You can address these out of order, but ultimately, they must be in alignment with each other if you want to reach peace with your existence.

The last two are what I want to speak to in particular

The “Base” of Change, Purpose and Identity

When changing one’s self is most often discussed, certain obvious factors emerge. Environment and Behavior are easy to identity, as are beliefs and intelligence/capabilities.

You might think of it this way,

Structure-Your external environment, and your behaviors/habits within that environment (or environments)

Foundation-Your beliefs that you hold that support your habits/behaviors, along with your intelligence/skillsets you’ve cultivated in the process thereof.

These seems like a fairly complete picture, and books have been written on these qualities in the singular. BUT, there is the BASE. And the Base doesn’t get talked about as much

To speak metaphorically,

When you go to build a building, you do not immediately lay down a foundation, you need a base, and that base needs to be level. The base is the land you build on.

If the base is uneven, it must be flattened out. If its unstable, it may need to be leveled and compacted and material added. If it cannot be made flat, then the foundation will require a reinforced cornerstone to achieve a level surface to build from.

Your Base is your Identity, and your Mission.

These are not esoteric concepts. I’ve had many clients over the years, and I have seen seemingly stable and “together” people utterly fail, breakdown, quit, cry, rage, and fall apart over seemingly innocuous mistakes. I’ve also seen “together” people utterly sabotage themselves, or be incredibly and deeply unhappy, despite outward appearances of success.

What are the demons that plague them? Its not their environment, nor their dominant behaviors. Those are on point.

It’s not their intelligence, they are quite sharp. And their beliefs are not self-limiting or dangerous or negative.

It comes down to two areas, if you dig deep enough

-Identity crisis-usually from harboring deeply repressed or suppressed fears/insecurities that they dare not speak of lest the truth utterly murder them. Family issues are usually what is buried deep, or secrets they keep, or insecurity and fears, or all three.

I’ve got no special suggestion for how to deal with this, other than you are going to need to confront it at some point, especially if it’s sabotaging you in other areas of your life.

To quote the Gospel of Thomas

“Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you. For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest.”

-Mission-this is the damnable of question of “Who am I, and what do I want?”

The people with the crisis’s never asked it. Or at least they did not answer it, or avoided answering it.

The answer to this question is personal entirely to you. You find it, create it, engineer it, construct it, discover it, and are sure as hell never given it.

Again, I’ve nothing profound to offer on this one, no one can give you the answer as to what drives meaning in your life. I can only pose the question. But I will quote the Gospel of Thomas again, to drive the point home

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you [will] kill you.”

If you are going to ruin your life, have it be for a better reason than fear of question you never wanted to answer.

Figure out your base, lest your ground break beneath you.