On identity

I've been plugging away at reading Adam Grant's new book "Think Again". As expected, It has his delightful writing style and punchy informational anecdotes. One such idea that I've been really thinking about is cultivating a learning culture.

The book has a diagram that somewhat looks like this (in the book it is two diagrams, I've combined it here.) I really like this. This is consistently the thing that I grapple most with. I cannot separate myself from the things I do. And what a simple way to differentiate the two. I have gone to the "I should give up" bit way too often. Although there isn't anything wrong with giving up.
Because you make choices on what you want to focus on and what you want to quit. However, doing so because you don't have a good esteem or because you think you're a failure is wrong. You may feel like you're the worst ever, but that's because you're asking the wrong question to begin with. I think that's the big "problem" that I needed to think again about. "What can I do to get better at this" can only really be answered if you think the skill is the thing that is lacking. If you've already committed to an identity, it becomes very difficult to shake that off. Grant calls this "Identity Foreclosure" (contrast it with Identity Crises). Instead of questioning the possibility of a change in identity, you double down.

This is where grit rears its ugly teeth. You effectively trap yourself in a game of ever increasing commitment to your identity. Uncertainty about your identity produces drastic dissonance. Dissonance is uncomfortable. And dissonance theory (see book Mistakes were made- but not by me by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson) basically postulates that we will do just about anything to get back to feeling comfortable. Even if it means ignoring / justifying things that make no sense. And so if you'd committed the error of judging yourself by an identity, and committed to it- you're in for a wild ride. You could be a Pulitzer winning writer, and still have zero confidence in your writing. Justifications like "It was just luck" or "Anyone could have gotten it" or even "They must have made a mistake" - really anything to get you back to consonance. Although for some of us, I don't even know how we'd get that far in our craft.

The other part of identity foreclosure that's dangerous is that this committed identity can often lead us to ignore signs to rethink things. This can be really dangerous, especially at young age. If you think back to the question that adults asked you most often as a kid, it probably went along the lines of "what do you want to be when you grow up?". A perfectly innocuous question at the forefront. Folks might be just asking to figure out your interests but they're also trying to pin down a label on you. To be fair, they may not be doing this intentionally. It just happens to be something we tend to do for shortcuts. It's not out of malice. We're just pattern seekers; makes life easier. But not always for the better. Especially when it comes to kids; they are very impressionable.
And the last thing you want to do is encourage them to lock themself in an identity.

Grant talks about one of this brothers who at a young age committed to an identity as a doctor. His parents had been doctors, and out of the other brothers this one seemed to be the one to carry on that legacy. So in the book, Grant recounts many situations when the younger brother would speak with him about doing business or studying economics. But at every turn, he would return to his locked identity and continue to forge forwards. Ignoring all the signs that might have suggested to him to at least try different things. What ended up happening? Well, he quit his prestigious neurological position - after many years of work to get there. Aannnnnd he started doing business.

There's a festival in Hindu religious tradition called "Dashain". As part of the festival elders give you tika on your forehead and bless your aims. The most prevalent question they ask is what you want to be. There's nothing malicious about this, of course. But they're also judging what you're saying. For a few of my cousins and brothers, their answers remained the same. Doctors, physicians, computer scientists, and their ilk. The first year that I answered the question (that I can remember) I told them I wanted to be a taxi driver. In the following years, my answers would shift from that to a pilot, theatre technician, musician, artist, monk, and computer scientist. My answers were often ridiculed for being "childish" or because I was "flip-flopping" so much; why couldn't my answers be consistent like my brothers? It might have been childish but it was acceptable for the time being because I was a child. However, when my answers continued to shift even as a teenager, and forward - it became less than acceptable.

I don't know what it was, but at one point I was encouraged to pick something - anything. Folks no longer cared whether it was childish or even realistic; there needed to be a commitment on an identiy. A path forward. So I foreclosed on an identity as an artist. Yes, being an artist still brought forth comments about how unrealistic it was (and there were many), but at least it was something. Not just aimless wandering around. Somehow this was more acceptable than the latter to the rest of the family. But, little did I know that committing to an identity was also meant certain activities becoming incompatible.

It started off with folks saying innocuous things like "Oh an artist doesn't have to worry about math and technology". But it got reinforced on the regular. Folks would only speak to you about certain topics. Your gifts would fall on a pattern of stereotype (more drugstore sketchbooks than I care to recall, let me tell you). Eventually, you start marshaling these other interests out yourself. Much like Grant's brother, you start eliminating competing interests because you must forge onward. I was nowhere as disciplined as brother Grant, so instead I started getting a lot of tools/objects/paraphernalia from other interests in lieu of actually partaking in them (see my last note).

Looking back now, I can appreciate the indecisiveness of my interests. I didn't want to "be" something. I just wanted to do a lot of things. I kind of wished my parents and their ilk had focused on the things I did. Although I can't say what difference that would've made in the long run. These are just good things to have had the opportunity to Think Again.