Identity, Who Are You Without It?

“Oh, it’s that Identity thing again!” says James as we’re talking over one of our regular Zoom catch ups

James is a client who’s been with me through some tough times, and of late he’s been feeling aimless, like he had no direction.

Which is a very common thing when people experience a shift in their identity.

He and his wife have reached certain life goals and he’s not sure where to go next.

For many that come to me, it’s an injury that threatens their identity as an athlete

For some it’s the mileage build up threatening their identity as as an immortal

It could be a location move away from what you know

It could be a relationship change

An illness

There are so many things that can upset your view of who you are and how you identify yourself.

I’ve been through it this last while.

Leaving Wg-Fit behind when I moved away from Dublin was incredibly jarring for me.

I started that place when my wife was pregnant with our first child, we both lost our jobs, the property bubble burst and the country went into a deep recession.

So I went all in on Wg-Fit, created an income that supported my family for 15 years.

And when we moved to Northern Ireland, we joked that I finally got to meet my kids I’d spent so many hours working each and every week for that whiole time.

Suddenly stepping away from all that, my hub that my world revolved around left me adrift. Without my Wg-Fit identity, I was lost.

It was worse than my back injuries that killed my identity as a full time martial artist, because that was what transitioned me to coaching.

This was different.

So, when people come to me lost, adrift, struggling with identity, I get it, I truly do.

And I’ve been thinking of late, as that Louis Theroux Manosphere documentary lives rent free in my mind, and I’m hearing young lads throwing around manosphere adjacent terminology. I’ve been thinking about identity.

It’s an emergent property, that is it grows and changes as we do.

As kids, our family is the primary influence, then our peers, then mentors, coaches, teachers.

Then as we grow, we leave home and gather up different experiences, and we develop this view of ourselves.

If we do this right, each decade we gain, we can look back at the previous decades and, all going well, we think “I was such a dickhead!” 

And we only think that because of how much we have grown and how much we have learned.

But I’m seeing two issues, one is as old as the hills, the other a newer one.

The old one, is what we talked about above, a loss of identity due to significant circumstance change.

In James’ case, it seemed to me he wasn’t looking back and taking stock of how far he had come.

He was still this 20yr old cocky little shit sticking his chest out, not realising that he’s almost 40 with a successful career, loving wife and a list of adventures and achievements behind him, he has nothing left to prove.

Not to himself or to anybody else.

And that is the middle age identity crisis right there for so many, that transition to realising that you have nothing left to prove.

It’s a big part of where I was in that post Wg-Fit fugue.

As for the younger generation, and this manosphere nonsense, I’ve noticed how the internet, which has always had an echo chamber element to it, is now convincing people that they are what they are and it’s not their fault but they can’t change.

It seems any failing you have has a title attached to it, “Incel” being a popular one. And rather than being encouraged to develop oneself, to grow and learn, it seem that once you assume the identity of “Incel” that is you and you can sit there and be angry at everyone else.

I’ve seen people who are given medical diagnosis assume the identity of that diagnosis, but it seems people are looking for an identity to cling onto, a safety net.

And I’ll tell you now, in my experience, safety nets are a double edge sword. You’ll experience the most growth by trying to shed those nets.

And in doing so, you learn to fly

Like the Wild Geese my old gym was named after.

It’s not always simple

And it’s never easy

Dave www.DaveHedges.net