In this article: Mindset is the assumptive base, and identity the story weaving the assumptions together. Challenging the assumptions, challenges the identity.
Our identity is the story we've created explaining who we are. It explains with greater or lesser degrees of coherence why we are the way we are, what we do, why what's happened to us happened, where we're headed, and why what we want to do is important to do.
Our identity explains us. Without which at best we could only mechanically follow the instructions of others, or the habitual patterns already established.
And like all stories, it's made up of pieces, like pieces of a puzzle.
Beliefs, ideas, world-views, concepts, feelings, intuitions, gut-feelings, pathologies and personality typologies, all forming the mindset assumptions of the story, like the bricks of a house.
Most of us step in and out of multiple stories. The story of who I am at work, at home, with parents, children and family, at the local club and pub, as a male, Caucasian, straight, at church or in my spiritual group.
Of course we rarely notice the changing stories because the awareness that we are, remains the same, consistent. And it's that feeling of consistency that allows us to inhabit multiple and often conflicting stories.
Until for whatever reason we need to get our story straight -- maybe for the purpose of personal or business branding. Or we come face to face with the inevitable fact that we are many and not one, and it hurts. Or one story has come to dominate and it's not the story that feels good or true. Or some tragic or profound event occurs to make us inquire into and question, our mindset assumptions
If one of our core assumptions is that 'gay' is wrong, and our daughter comes home with the wonderful news that she's in love with the neighbours daughter... it's not the news that's bad, but rather that it challenges a core assumption. It challenges who I am, and what groups and cultures I fit into -- it may even challenge the story of what happens to me when I'm dead.
The more profound the assumption challenged the greater the identity crisis it provokes. And most parents would prefer to disown, punish, manipulate and seek a magic cure for their children, than face an identity crisis and the fall-out from that.
And when a corporate professional resigns from the corporate narrative to begin her own making a difference, business, she exits that fundamental story and those core assumptions that makes up so much of who she believes herself to be. And she is forced to forge a new more coherent and empowering identity -- if she really desires to make that difference.
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