Episode 03: You are More Than the Things You Like

[00:00:00] Seth: Who are you? How do you think people would describe you? Do you think you could be described in a few sentences? Another thought would be, who do you think you are? We live life being distinguished from other people by the things we do, the way we look, the places we grew up, the beliefs we profess, the jobs we have.

In a way, it's a tool to us. They help us distinguish one person from the next. We use them to know who to trust. Other people use them to know if they can trust us. Yeah, it's actually, it's an incredible tool. You know, I know somebody that has a history of doing A, B, and C is most likely going to have a future doing.

A, B, and C. Similarly, those traits help us to predict ourselves. They form a direction in our lives, almost like bumpers at a bowling alley. When we bump up against those, it's like they're telling us that we're out of character and they kind of push us back in, back to the same approximate course that we were on before.

And every once in a while a person starts to feel so constricted by that identity that they They jump lanes and just for the sake so that they can breathe again, making decisions is kind of a pain. You know, we often think it's nice to have options, but if you got too many, you get overwhelmed. You don't know what to do.

You're just too many choices. It's, it's hard to know what the best one is. And so in a way that's, that's how our own. Predictable behavior cuts out so many options. If you're an accountant, you're automatically on a track to be doing something probably business related most of your life. Not that you can change it or do something way out of left field, but generally speaking, what you did yesterday, you're going to do some more of it tomorrow.

That's the most likely outcome. And that helps us in a lot of ways, taking certain things off the table. It just helps us make decisions. It helps us move forward without, like I said, with so many decisions, it can be kind of, overwhelming to say the least, I remember, um, an example of this would be I went to an autumn with an auto museum here in Tallahassee.

It's. Incredible how many cars that guy has in there. I have no idea how much they're all worth, but it's, it's millions of dollars worth of cars there. And I realized they're all stacked right next to each other. Just hundreds of these classic cars, exotic cars, all sorts of different cars. And as I was going by, it was, it was, In and of itself, just seeing that many classic cars all together was kind of impressive, but you walk right past these cars and you barely notice them.

I mean, it's just, they, they look cheap next to each other because there's no, you can't really focus on one because it's so close to the next one. There's one section where they had some of these Batman cars where they kind of had them a little separate. It was a little more displayed. I was like, okay, I'm going to sit here and I'm going to observe this one.

But I mean, if you were to do that with all these other cars, I mean, you'd be there for days. Just, all right, I'm going to. Try to comprehend this one car. So funny enough in museums and most museums realize this, you'll notice that they have a lot more wall space. Then what they're actually using, because if they give you too much, it's just, it's not even going to be a good experience.

You're just gonna be overwhelmed. But if they kind of direct you and let you look at one thing at a time, they kind of match the pace they expect you to go at a slow walk, you can really enjoy that. And the same goes for pretty much everything in life, but it definitely goes for our own personalities. We are taking things off the table and that's okay to, to some extent, but sometimes we take off too much.

So a lot of times I, I just described some of these people that are in these, they're in their lane, but like the lane is too tight for them. They become too defined by all of these descriptors in their life. And you'll see these people, they'll just jump lanes and they'll do like 180 in their lives. And not everyone does this.

You know, some of these people just kinda, I don't know if they can widen the lane or something. That's what they do, but very frequently I see these people that just crack and it goes both directions Sometimes I see these religious people that suddenly are no longer religious and they're living lives Completely the opposite of what they were before and on the contrary.

I see people that were living lives completely contrary to what religious people

It's, it happens pretty frequently, they often just don't change a few things, but rather they shatter the very idea of their past selves and they become somebody altogether different. It's like it's the same driver, but they're playing a different game now. Often a reaction to the one that they were playing before.

So I just want to give an example of how I think these identities and these, these descriptions of us play out sometimes. So I love stories about tough men. In fact one of my favorite movies is True Grit. There's There's this incredible amount of meaning towards the end of the movie, spoiler alert, where the main character tries to save the life of a young girl, and the man just kinda, he just goes through hell trying to save this young girl, and just pushes him to his absolute limits.

To me, that's kind of representative of the masculine ideal. I want to be that kind of a man. In fact, I think it's an ideal that most men would benefit from pursuing, if not all men. That being said, we get caught up sometimes in the appearance of being that guy, less so than actually being the person. The thing I kind of want to point out here is it's not actually the Inherent toughness in those men, in those stories that make them so inspiring.

It's actually the fact that as they're trying to do it, they're stumbling, but they're getting back up again. You know, another good example here is Superman. It's really not an interesting story. Because the real superpower that Superman has, it's not laser vision, it's not super strength, and it's not his ability to fly.

It's his character. And if he could win everything, if he truly was a god superhero, he could snap his fingers and everything Everything is overcome. We would never see his character. And that is, that's the reason for watching the show. You know, it's novel to see the superpowers and stuff. But it's the actual person.

And the stumbling, and the getting back up again, is what moves us. So, deep down inside, you're probably not a tough guy. I'm not so sure that I am, but the thing that you may have It's that indescribable spark that drives you to get back up again when you stumble. And if it's not there, maybe it just needs to be woken up.

This goes way beyond tough guys though. When you become in your own mind the things that people define you as too rigidly, the pressure builds. You're going to end up medicating or you're going to end up cracking in some way. You might end up like these people I was talking about earlier. They just kind of like blow the whole thing to crap and they go and they do something entirely different.

But you don't have to be tied to any of those options. You can take a breath and recognize you're not the unbreakable man that everyone depends on every second of the day. Nor are you. That never makes anyone mad. You're not their unreliable black sheep in the family. You're not the jock. You're not the anime loving video gamer that lives in his mom's basement.

You're not anything. These are just ways to describe you. And I hate when I see people adopt descriptions of themselves to keep them forever limited. Because I used to do it myself and probably I still do sometimes. It's a subtle thing. It's not always easy to be aware that we're doing it, but it's real.

So when a person says, I don't do sports, I think fill in the blank that that thing is dumb. I can't do that. I'm not good at math. I'm not pretty. I'm not smart. I am smart. I'm athletic. I don't dance. I never shop at Walmart. I'm a numbers person. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What's funny is it's the positive descriptions that can be just as limiting as the ones that are negative.

I mean, sometimes thinking you're a smart person, for example, prevents you from realizing how stupid you actually are. And you keep yourself from, from learning more, recognizing that who you are is not set in stone, and it's not, it's not fact. Who you are is what you're doing at this very moment, not what you did yesterday, not what you're going to do.

Who you are is what you are right now. So while the positive descriptions will keep you locked into ways of thinking that keep you limited, the negatives will keep you from ever learning. Raising the bar in your life. They'll keep you from trying new things. They'll keep you from doing things They'll keep you from pushing yourself You'll just forever be limited into that little bubble you've created for yourself because you said I can't do this or I won't do this Or I never will But never let things that are not you rule you if you grew up poor That doesn't mean you can't be rich and if you messed up big time a few times, that doesn't mean you You have to make your mistakes to find the rest of your life.

It doesn't mean that those mistakes are you. If you're abused, it doesn't make you powerless today. What you have done or what has been done to you should never rule who you are on the inside. That's for you to be in charge of, not your past and not what other people think you are. I think becoming authentically you is the process of living a life free from your own and others descriptions of yourself.

I just want to mention one, one more movie here in, in Gone with the Wind. One of my favorite characters is Rhett Butler, a guy that just is, lives entirely independently of what other people think. And in the end, Rhett Butler, true to himself, says, frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn. And I think that's the approach we need to take to those descriptions we give ourselves and the descriptions that other people give to us, because they'll never be us and they never are.

So now I just want to wrap up and to the best of my ability, I want to describe the indescribable being that you are. You are more than the things you like. You are more than your circumstances. You are more than your race. You are more than your occupation. You are more than the place you came from. You are more than your identity.

You are the traveler. You are the hero. You're the good. You're the bad. You're evil. You're holy. You're the blood, sweat, and tears in your life. You are the lessons learned. The hardship experienced. You are the indescribable mystery. You cannot be described. You are more. You are more than all the things that have ever been used to describe you.

And you're free. You don't have to be defined by them.