Labels Shaped My Identity
The beginning of something new. It’s exciting, and also scary and anxiety-inducing. New means changing. Shifting. Growing. New means stepping outside one’s comfort zone and doing something you’ve never done before. It makes you feel vulnerable, perhaps inadequate, and definitely a smidge fearful.
I recently chose to do something new. I chose to walk away from a company that I helped build from the ground up. And I’m scared shitless. Through this transition, I’m realizing I have created an entire persona and identity around one thing: my job title. In my case, it’s co-CEO. The “co-CEO” title has been one of the best labels and identities I have ever had the privilege of carrying.
Not surprisingly, elite job titles can be both positive and negative. Positive because they can reflect certain characteristics or abilities, certain levels of comprehension. But they can also become negative when one wraps their entire identity and value around them. If I was no longer a co-CEO, then what was I? Who was I? Where would my value and worth come from?
A couple years ago, Davie Blu, a friend and spiritual mentor, asked me to make a list of all of the “labels” I have either given myself, or have been given by others throughout my life. The exercise had two parts: first, list all of your labels; second, analyze and begin to deconstruct them. I had to look at each label and ask myself, “Says who?" Who said this to me? And, did they actually say it? Or did they make me feel it? What is my first memory of having this label? Have these labels become part of my identity?
It’s a great exercise for anyone because you can begin to unpack all of the labels that have helped shape your identity, both good and bad. After doing the exercise, I was shocked to see that I had come up with 39 different labels (I listed them below). Thirty-nine labels that have, for better or worse, helped create my identity and who I am today.
Insecurities can emerge when labels are misplaced, misused, and inaccurately identified with. When a teacher tells someone that math isn’t their strong suit, they may never pursue their dream of architecture for fear they might not be able to pass the math classes.
In an example from my list, I had labeled myself as a poor public speaker. Because I believed this, it manifested into a self-fulfilling prophecy. I can’t tell you how many times early in my career as co-CEO that I prepped, practiced, got up to speak, and then completely froze. Like couldn’t-even-get-a-word-out frozen. Which, of course, reinforced in my head that I’m a bad public speaker. How differently would those experiences have been if I had labeled myself a good public speaker?
Conversely, confidence can grow when labels are attributed with love and good intentions, but even that is not always healthy. The working mom who is everything to everyone, and is told she is a great mom, will continue to overextend herself to the point of fatigue and illness to keep the title of a great mom. The first label I wrote down in the list below – “driven” – is what drove me to be successful in each phase of my life. I was so “driven” that I was willing to sacrifice my own needs and desires to prove I was deserving of the success I was achieving.
Whether the labels and titles you associate with yourself are positive or negative, real or perceived, they shape your identity and how you show up in the world. For five years I had the title co-CEO. And like any CEO title, there was prestige and power that came with it.
I LOVED being co-CEO, but not because of the aforementioned benefits. I loved it because I loved our team. I loved finding solutions for our growing pains with new talent – like completing a puzzle – each piece coming together for the greater whole. I loved creating well-paying jobs and paying taxes back into the communities we represented and that I grew up in. I loved leading, inspiring, and empowering our team. So when my same friend Davie Blu asked me in August of 2022, “Who are you without what you have created?” I was a little rocked. It was almost as if she knew what was coming and was helping me prepare for it. Over the course of the next few months, I took time to understand who was behind those labels and everything I had created externally.
Who was I? Like, really. At my core, and without the identity of co-CEO, who am I?
I started working with a therapist who taught me about vulnerability, and I started understanding what mattered to me. And none of it was reliant on the labels I had self-attributed or that had been given to me.
When I started to really understand what mattered to me, the labels and the identity mattered much less. That doesn’t mean I stopped caring all of a sudden. But I didn’t let old habits and comforts define me. This, in the end, was what enabled me to make some really hard decisions, like separating from my husband of sixteen years and leaving the business I loved. Decisions that hurt a lot, but ultimately were the best possible decisions I could have made to allow me to discover who I am and what I want for this next chapter of my life.
The labels I wrote down in March of 2020 when doing an exercise about the words that had defined me for most of my life.
Driven
Smart
Kind
Mom
Wife
Partner
Sad
Empty
Wants more
Perfect
Lucky
Loving
Ride- or- die
Strong
Spiritual
Hard-working
Compassionate
Athletic
Confident
Bad speech giver
Second guesser
Intuitive
Intimidated
Giving/generous
Defensive
Walled/protected
co-CEO
Wants to be respected
Introverted
Awkward
Social
Friend
Yearns
Healthy
Pragmatic
Busy
Popular
Successful
Daughter
