Who Am I and How Do I Find Me? From the Inside Out

You know how some days you have those existential crisis moments and you say to yourself, "oh f*ck who am I and what have I done with my life, and what do I do now?" You’re in good company. 

It’s an important question that we all need to answer from time to time, since the answer changes as we do. And most of us kind of flap our arms in the waters of existence while the rest of us struggle to doggy paddle frantically with the knowledge that we’ve gathered here and there about how to emerge from the depths to find this elusive “self”. 

Who am I?... iconic.

I mean everyone tells you, “be yourself” as a piece of advice. But that doesn't help if you don't know how!!

So, how do I find myself? 

If you’re up for a little bit of learning today, I’m gonna cite Erik Erikson (yah real name) because pretty much everyone who studies psychology learns his way . Erik Erikson created the "stages of psycho-social development” - basically how your brain grows up in relation to other people. 

Erikson believed these were all essential, but the most crucial is your journey with identity. He ballparked the ages at which you go through each one, as you see above. As the image portrays, they are steps - so they build on one another. If you have had trouble, for example, with "trust vs. mistrust" as an infant (something pretty much entirely out of your control) then children and adults find themselves working through that piece (again) as they become aware of it.

Also each stage comes with a key virtue that will "unlock" each stage as you work through it. And identity (surprise, surprise) has the lucky chance of being developed when we were angsty little preteens and teenagers. About 12-18. And the key virtue? Fidelity. Probably one of the most difficult things to figure out about yourself when your hormones are flying around and your body is changing and you're panicking constantly about the various hoops high school has to offer. If you’re already having nightmarish flashbacks, I understand. 

Yes, those awkward flustering confusing terrifying years had a purpose; we all go through this difficult phase of trying on different hats and seeing how they fit, which heroes we admire, which trends that make us feel socially acceptable (spike bracelets were my emo favorite), which clubs we want to be a part of, which friends we like, and through all of these interactions of odd social failures and victories we are trying to figure out who we are. And who we are consists of what we value based on our experiences, which in turn influences our actions and choices. So it’s a pretty big f*cking deal that we figure out who we are, so we can figure out what our life is going to look like. 

Kim's Convenience I love you

The good news is, if you're having an identity crisis, you're on the right track. We are, a species, obsessed with this. Nearly every book, myth, legend, TV show, miniseries, and movie is centered around a character who is discovering something about themselves. If the character doesn’t learn something or develop in some way, we get bored of it. Common criticism of a film, right? "Lacking character development." Or, in contrast, a character will remain un-phased by a battery of wild and unfortunate events (like sitcoms and the more campy comic books). We want to know that either we will change with the times to become more whole, OR that we will remain steadily true to ourselves (whoever that is) despite all the turmoil that exists in this world. Our whole life is this identity journey. Our humanity itself is an identity journey. 

That leads back to our question: so how do I find myself?? 

My answer is this:
First, get meta.
Think about the things you think about. Care about. Get mad about. Spend money on. Laugh about. People you hang out with. How you treat your shoes. How you get up in the morning. What you wear. What you do when you want to feel better. What you’re good at. What you stink at. Your most easily recalled memories. Your most dire moments. What intrigues you. What makes you change your mind. What you stubbornly keep believing or doing no matter what. Go on and on and on with it! 

Why so many? No one thing is going to define who you are, not entirely. We often make that mistake. Like, being “bad at math” in 5th grade means I am characteristically identified as someone who is immediately crippled by numbers. Having one bad experience with romance means you’re unlovable by all 10 billion other human beings on the planet. We make this mistake because we have a tendency to only see what's in front of us; our memory and logic can typically only handle so many iterations and calculations at one time. 

I know we feel this way sometimes.. but it really ain't true

I’m such a big picture person. Zooming out helps me a lot, all the time. Getting fixated on a tiny detail drives me insane. When I take the perspective of looking at an issue as a whole picture, it gives me comfort, it gives me a road map for where I could go, it helps me see connections and causes and effects. When it comes to identity, I guarantee that one part of you will never answer the question, “who am I?” 

this is so much a part of my identity.. Les Miz I love you too

I love the movie Inside Out for various reasons. It does so many things so well to explain emotion and memory and how they interact. (UC Berkeley researchers were involved in its creation, so, I mean, it had to be great.) Obviously it was a narrative that needed characters and plot lines so some things aren’t as true to the reality of the brain - but overall it’s a fantastic way to learn about emotions, and even more so, about identity and values. 

What I wish was made just a tiny itty bit more complex? The islands. Basically, the movie simplifies our personality to being set by core memories, which create an “island” which represents an aspect of our personality. In the movie, Riley had “family island” and “friendship island” and “hockey island” and “goofball island”. They all connect directly to headquarters, where her emotions "live".

But what they don’t do is connect to each other. And, semi-spoiler alert, when Riley feels disappointed and disillusioned by something she believed was true to her identity, the entire island falls dramatically into the abyss of forgotten memories. 

I would alter this slightly by connecting the islands to each other.. actually, maybe that’s what will happen in the sequel... Anyways. Each facet of our values depend on the others - when one is altered or falls away or transforms, the others shift to compensate. After all, if you had 5 life rafts and suddenly you weren’t sure of your grip on about 3 of them, those other 2 would be much more dire for your survival, right? 

The other key piece to finding your identity that I think Inside Out really gets right is this: 
Listen harder to your moments of sadness. 

These are indicators of your deepest values. Mourning and suffering have been demonized in so many cultures; it’s an essential piece of the human existence, and it is absolutely crucial to finding who you are. We stuff it away, we ignore it, we try to cover it up with makeup and bright colors and EDM, but in the end, our sadness will continue to touch our memories until we lose control of our emotional dashboard.

If it helps, write these things down. Or talk them out with someone you trust.

Last piece:
Make choices. Make mistakes. Try again. Problem-solve.

This is a tough one for me as a perfectionist. When you've sort of got it figured out, do something that enhances or tests your values. Either way, it'll take you out of your comfort zone by nature. Every quest takes their hero on a journey outside of home; for us, discovering our identity means trying on our values of different colors and stepping out into the light to see how we feel. If you value family, how do you show it? Can it be enhanced in some way? If you value friendship, how do you strengthen your bonds? How can you trust they're still there even when you don't see them? And when you think you've got an answer, do it. And when you see that it works, try it again. And if it doesn't, turn around and go the other way.

Sometimes, when you take life from the inside out... it's as simple as that.

Shout out to my dear friend, Heesun, for inspiring this post! Check her out if you love to travel like we do.. we are traveling the world together real soon! http://mewanttravel.com/