Identity Shifting
The Amplified Impact Podcast
December 30th, 2023
In today’s episode, I’m tackling a topic close to my heart: the evolution of identities.
I’ve held onto identities tied to specific activities, only to find them change over time.
It’s tough when something you love shifts away from your life, and those around you might not be ready for that change.
There’s no quick fix, just awareness that these changes are part of growth.
Remember, you’re not defined by what you do but how you do it…the values and resilience you bring.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“Realize that you are not what you do, you are how you do what you do. That’s the part of the identity that is most important.”
– Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
One of the things I’ve struggled with most over the last, let’s say, 20 years is the identity that I establish with myself around a particular activity that for a long time seems like everything seems like the person I was meant to be. And then as I go through a different season of life and maybe my tastes start to evolve and my interests start to move towards other things, I struggle because I still cling to the identity I had from the season before. So here’s what I mean by this. To give, like, a tangible example. When I came out of high school, I went into college and I ran cross country and track. I lived and breathed long distance running ever since I was, like, 14. And I remember my freshman year on the team, I would see the seniors and hold them in this high, high regard, and these guys are badasses and amazing. And then when they graduated, they kind of just fell off the earth to me.
I didn’t know anything about what they were doing. This is kind of pre facebook and other social media stuff, so I didn’t have a way of tracking what they were doing with their life. And then I remember my junior year, a couple of the guys that had been seniors my freshman year, they came back, they came to visit. I was startled to find that all of them had stopped running and they’d gotten onto different activities. I think a lot of them got into lifting weights, and this shocked me. I was like, wait a minute, you guys don’t run anymore? These were guys that ran all through college competitively at the highest levels. And now, just a few years out of school, they had all given up and stopped running. And I couldn’t reconcile it.
It just seems so sad to me. Like this thing that you had once loved and dedicated so much of your life and your identity to you. Don’t do it anymore. I couldn’t understand it because I was still so deeply in love with the activity itself. I wasn’t in a place yet that I could understand that we change and we evolve. And then it happened to me. It happened to me almost exactly as it happened to them a couple of years out of school, suddenly the love I had with running started to wane. And out of nowhere, rock climbing appeared, and it became the thing that I became obsessed with.
And I became very, very adamant about, this is who I was meant to be. I am a rock climber. I’m not just a person who rock climbs. I am a rock climber. It’s a core part of my identity. And the same thing happened where I lived and breathed that life for about close to a decade, I would say. And throughout that time, there was people who were further along on the journey than me, who had been climbing, maybe started earlier than me. And they were just as deeply in love with it as I was on our journey in the beginning.
But over time, as they would hit maybe their decade in the sport and they start to hit their thirty s and their mid thirty s, I started to notice that these people that had once been like my brothers on the cliffs, all they could ever dream of was, like, their next climb. Suddenly they were spending less and less time at the gym and spending less and less time at the cliffs. And slowly they would maybe retire and go different directions and go into other activities. And I actually fell into a little bit of a depression at this time as I watched some of the closest people in my life stop doing this thing that we had bonded over and like, forged this relationship through. And it. And it depressed me because I couldn’t imagine what would ever possess me to want to walk away from climbing. Like, how that would ever be possible. I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
When you’re so deep in the moment of the thing that you love, you just can’t see beyond it. And I couldn’t. And I didn’t have the perspective at that time to be able to look back and realize, like, I have already done this once. I did this with rock climbing, with running. But then, sure enough, around the time that I turned 34, 35, I went through a similar evolution where the spark just wasn’t there anymore. And I was going to the gym out of loyalty to a routine, but not out of love. And I clung to it for a long time. I kept going and forcing myself, even though the passion wasn’t there.
I continued to move forward and make myself do it because I thought that’s what I needed to do. And over time, I just got to the point where I was like, I don’t think about rock climbing anymore. I don’t live and breathe it. It’s not the thing that I want to dedicate my life to. It’s not who I am anymore. Now I am just a guy who climbs. I’m no longer a rock climber. It’s not my identity.
And then I moved on. And this has happened in other areas of life, with business and athletics, whatever, but I think everybody has gone through this or will go through this at some point. And it can be very, very disruptive every time you do it because it’s almost like a shedding of skin a shedding of self so that a new you can step forward into the world. And it can be very, very difficult, not least of all because, one, you cling to your identity, but by the time you’re ready to let it go, the people in your life who you’ve created this identity around and with, they might not be ready to let it go in the way that I wasn’t ready to let go of the identity I had created for my friends as rock climbers or runners. And so then to see them try to shed that, and I’d be like, no, don’t do that. I wanted to hold them where they were. And that can be very difficult because the people in your life, they love you. They know you as this thing, and they don’t want you to necessarily change.
It’s not that they’re trying to hold you back, but they want you to be the person that they’ve always known you to be. And sometimes that can be very, very negative if the person that you’re trying to shed is holding you back. For me, when I was living in that van and I was in debt, I needed to let go of a lot of who I was. And thankfully, nobody was really trying to keep me in that place. But if they had been, it would have been that much more difficult. So, like, if you are drinking too much, smoking too much, living an unhealthy lifestyle, and the people that you’re hanging out with are living that same lifestyle, and they’re trying to keep you in that place with them, as you try to say, I want to get out of this bucket, well, it’s like a bucket full of crabs. As you start reaching for the lip to pull yourself out and over, they’re reaching up to grab you and pull you back down. And I share this because identity shifts are inevitable.
You are not the same person you were last year. The shifts, the changes, they’re maybe small, but they’re there. And the person that you are this year is probably very different than who you were ten years ago. And that’s going to continue happening over the course of your life. Ideally, as you continue to grow and learn and expand, who you are and what it means to be you continues to grow. And I just want to share this. I have no real takeaway. I have no real tips on how to do this.
I think just generally being aware that these identities are one malleable, but two very, very difficult to let go of. I think that is the battle. And just being aware that you are in that battle can make fighting the battle that much easier. Whereas I didn’t realize it when I was younger that I was in this battle, that it was natural to be fighting it, that this was an inevitable battle we’re all going to have to fight at some point. That made it much harder because I resisted fighting it in the way that it needed to be fought. And so I hope this brings you some value. I don’t know what identity you have for yourself. I’m sure there’s dozens of them.
We all think of ourselves in a multitude of ways, but just be kind with yourself. Realize that you are not what you do, you are how you do what you do. That’s the part of the identity that is most important. So you’re not a rock climber. You’re a person who does hard things, who shows up, who lives a healthy lifestyle, who has integrity, who does hard things, who challenges themselves, who’s continually on a path of growth. And that is the more important thing to attach your identity to, is how you do what you do, not what you do. The what’s going to change and maybe even the how will change over time as you improve it. But I think that is the better part to attach your identity to, is the how, not the what.
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