It is the beginning of a new year and as usual  I am sure you are busy with not only celebrations but also pondering your life and wondering where the hell has all that time disappeared to. You might think about “why am I still fat”, “why am I still broke” and of course “why am I still doing the work I am unhappy with”. This is all normal, we are built to want more out of life.

So naturally, after a few days of drowning our disappointment with alcohol and calorie-laden food, we get to our senses and realise that hey, if we want change we need to do it ourselves. And we need to set goals. But above everything else, to be happy we need to find our purpose, or so we were told.

Having a purpose help us feel better about who we are. By having purpose-driven goals, we convince ourselves of a better future yet to come. By achieving them, we are telling ourselves that we are someone who can do things, be successful.

What if, we stop for a minute and think about who we are and the person we want to become? After all, don’t goals serve to meet some needs that we have and therefore also define us as a person?

When we think about who we are as individuals, we tend to think about what we do for a living. We cannot help it; our work defines us. Our jobs tell us how to behave, how to dress, where to be, what to do with our time and whom to associate with.

In fact, work is such a pervasive definition of who we are that when we do not have a job, we get judged by people don’t we?

For example, in interviews when we have gaps between employment, there are usually judgmental questions and sentiments about it from the interviewers. We steel ourselves for questions about it and we even rehearse our answers. When has taking a break for a few months become such a big issue that we have to justify it?

It is like we have all collectively sat down and decided that people who are not working all of their lives are odd and therefore an outcast. I think we also ask what could those people without work possibly be doing with themselves all those months? Who were they all those months?

When we meet unemployed people, conversations become awkward too doesn’t it? So much of who we are is centered around work that without it, we do not know how to categorize an individual and that makes us uncomfortable.

But this article here is not about work, not really. What this is about is how we define ourselves.

Manic pursuits

Most of us chase goals, purpose and passion like a self-improvement maniac. You and I have done it all, haven’t we? All the self-help books, all the SMART goal setting, some of us even got into David Allen’s GTD productivity mania. Some are obsessed with sparking joy in their lives thanks to Marie Kondo or getting rid of excesses in our lives like The Minimalists.

Before we even get down to goalsetting and decluttering however, we are often told to find our why: our purpose behind what we do. The inspiration and step-by-step process for finding our purpose is abundant all over the internet and books.

There is no end to the experts who can help us too. By public opinion, it seemed like finding our purpose and setting the right goals paved the way to happiness and success.

But guess what is missing here? YOU.

All of these tools which are not without their merits by the way. However, they mostly serve to fix your external issues. Your goals, your to-dos, your clutter, these are all external projections of you. Often, these serve to project only a version of you. The version that you are proud to show others and yourself.

What these tools do not help you with is who you are. They do not help you to start from the basics which is defining your identity.

Who am I?

When I decided to pursue research and writing independently full time, I realised that I now had a few problems. Lack of social life is one of them but let’s get to that another time. What I found the most perplexing was that I no longer fit in anywhere.

The funny thing is when you are no longer in a box, metaphorically and physically, everyone struggles to figure out where you belong.

Yes, this includes yourself.

I no longer knew who I was without the 9 to 5 job. Was I a writer and/or a researcher but wait, isn’t that still my work? What else am I made up of?

I thought about who I am in terms of the roles I play. No, no, not that kind of role-playing 😉. The roles I am talking about is being a spouse, a parent, a sibling or a friend.

When we think of the roles we play, it usually involves some kind of an exchange with another person. As I’ve mentioned, being a spouse. I am a wife to my husband and his best friend. I am a daughter to my mum. I am also a sister to my siblings.

Sometimes, we define ourselves by our accomplishments and again, this refers to work a lot of the time like winning an award for something or promoted to a managerial post.

After roles and accomplishments, I considered my social identity. This is how we see ourselves as part of a larger group. This could be a religious group such as identifying yourself as a Christian or a sports group like being a Crossfitter or a yoga practitioner.

Here’s the problem I faced. I was not making money from writing and therefore I didn’t see that as work or accomplishment, in fact it was always icky describing myself as a writer. I am not at all religious so do not have any religious affiliations.

My gym workouts tend to be a solo event, so no groups there to hang with neither. I had no conceivable social identity!

I was not sure whether to be proud of the fact that I am so self-sufficient or be sad about having no groups of people nor accomplishments that I relate to.

By this time, I realised I still did not know who I was.

Inner self

Finally, without all the noise of roles, obligations, sports group, religious group and community, we can get down to our inner self.

I started thinking about what I really wanted in life, what I valued. I wanted to know what gave my life meaning, specifically to me and no one else.

I had to start digging deep such as finding out what my values are, what I believe in, what do I truly desire, what do I fear, my insecurities.

These personal thoughts were the key to knowing who I am. I found out that I valued freedom and autonomy the most. Any kind of work or life that did not allow for that was simply not for me.

I discovered that I have some limiting beliefs about myself, as do you I’m sure.

My insecurity was tethered to my limiting beliefs. I was insecure about my accomplishments and ability leading to the classic imposter syndrome. I believed that I did not have the right qualifications nor experience for what I wanted to do and it held me back for a long time. Still rears its ugly head time and again.

I also found out that I feared financial insecurity, so much so that I couldn’t enjoy the nicer things in life because I was afraid of getting used to it and then having it taken away. Also, I hang onto money like a mama bear guarding her cubs, my husband will be quick to attest to that.

Like me, I am sure that you have held some of these things in secret, banishing them to the back of the cupboard like the jeans we can longer wear but secretly tell ourselves we will be that size again. These are just some of the things we hold in secret without sharing with anyone else.

Many of us, including me, tend to try and “fix” the external goals. Maybe if we find our purpose we will live happily ever after. Maybe if we finally have a clutter free home, we will feel better about ourselves. But these are only skin-deep fixes.

They do not reach your core self.

We also use our work, roles and social identity to define ourselves and sometimes hide behind as well. But again, whilst they are a part of who we are, they are not all of who we are.

Our real self is who we are when we have nothing to prove.

Knowing thyself is only the beginning

Here is what I realised:

Who I am is not solely defined by my work nor my accomplishments.

Who I am is not only defined by what I am to others.

Who I am is not limited to the groups I associate or not associate with.

Knowing who I am on the inside helped me know what a meaningful life on the outside looks like to me.

Though we often leave this as the last resort, our inner self should place a higher priority in how we define ourselves.

If you are relying on finding your purpose or your passion to be the person you want to be, stop obsessing over those for now and start by defining who you are.

Don’t get me wrong, knowing who you are doesn’t mean that your work is done. If anything, that knowledge is only the beginning of truly aligning your life to your authentic self.

After that, it is all up to your grit and resilience to keep it going.