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identity
Inauthenticity: Identity Wants confuse what we are
[Excerpt from Unachievable]
The other day a client said to me, “I just want to understand myself. I just want to be true to myself.” It led to an interesting conversation about what the self really is and what it means to be true to it. What are we? Are we the beliefs about what we are? Are we the behaviours, actions and words? Are we our habits? Our values? Our opinions? Are we the experience of being us? Our tendencies and preferences? Our personality?
It is amazing how through this work eve…
Unachievable – is the want about fixing in place or getting rid of an emotion?
In their book, Stealing Fire, Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal calculate that the industry of ‘shutting off the self' is worth $4 trillion a year. They include all the activities, substances, experiences and practices that ultimately have the result of shutting down – even if only momentarily the burden of self-focus.
As they pointed out, many of these are ‘impulsive, destructive and unintentional’. They include activities such as legal and illegal drug taking, pornography and gambling which can, o…