As a leadership coach I’m committed to continually grow my self and keep pressing against my limits and blind spots. I found myself last night writing this in my personal journal: What is the question to ask myself everyday to grow deeper, to press higher?
Here’s one of the answers: “Who am I really?”
Another possible question to put me through my paces: “What is the difference between I and me?”
These questions get at identity. How do I see myself, and how will I manage myself over time so that I make sure I stay on course?
I have come to see that there is a fundamental difference between “I” and “Me”. In fact, I have many “Me’s”.
I think of the Me of last year who faced a new situation in life after my wife and I saw our younger adult son move to another city. Soon after that we sold our house and started traveling as a lifestyle. We kept working, but instead of putting our energy into keeping up an aging suburban house we took up a nomadic life and stayed nowhere more than a month or two. That is a very recent version of Me that is on the back side of mid-life and suddenly more mobile.
It reminds me of a younger version of Me before I had children when my wife and I made a series of moves in the span of several years for both education and career growth. There’s a still younger version of Me when I was quite young and before I ever went to school, learning about the world, and seeing the world through a child’s eyes.
These, and many more versions of Me, are all objects of my memory and observation. So who is doing the observing? I am, of course. I only have one I, and I don’t have all the limits of my Me’s: the physical body, the time and space that my Me occupies. As the I, I get to time travel and go to earlier points in the past. I also get to project forward into the possible future. I get to connect with loved ones, both those who are now living and those who have passed from this life. These connections transcend time and space.
This I is actually more real and lasting than all my Me’s, though they are certainly real too. This I is the one who acts. Philosophers would say I have agency and I get to decide how to spend my days and what to do with this life of mine.
I ask myself, “What is it I live for?” This is another one of the questions to challenge myself like I mentioned at the beginning. What is my life work, my vocation?
The Me’s have jobs or roles or functions that they fulfill. Only I have a life to live, one that gives my self the most meaning.
These are fairly new thoughts for me. I’ve grown into them and I have found my self awareness deepening. There’s a lot of value in distinguishing I from all the Me’s. As I do it more, I find my self becoming more transparent, clearer and less of a problem.
I’ve had plenty of problems in the past trying to figure out my purpose and confusing some version of Me with who I really am. Like a muddy pond constantly stirred up and made murky by busy feet, my self hasn’t been very transparent. As I stop stirring and let the mud settle, I start seeing with greater clarity. I can say I’m a lot less preoccupied with Me these days. I’m learning that I, the Observer, Agent, and Chooser, is here for a purpose and it’s better to pursue it.
It’s a beautiful, clean and clear insight. I wish I’d had it earlier. I don’t see it fully with perfect clarity, but it’s enough. At least I know to let the mud settle and things will get clearer.
So here are three questions to ask and challenge myself to grow:
“Who am I really?”
“What is the difference between I and Me?”
“What is it I live for?”
So what about you? I hope something in this makes sense to your I. Have you thought much about any of your Me’s and what you’re grateful for in each one?
