 |
 |
 |
||
|
||||
|
|
 |
The idea that you are at liberty to pick whatever path in life you want is the unspoken agony of the modern person. Call it the myth of personal freedom. This popular, but misguided, belief ignores the fact that life has order, and that that order bears heavily upon your choices, on what makes sense to do with the time you have. The good news is that, although you can't be anything you want, you have more potential than you know.
The order I am speaking about is contained in a code, your identity
code. Much like our genetic code, our identity code is born into each
of us, providing a complete map of how we as human beings are designed
to function - of how we are supposed to live - when we Crack your identity code and the contours of your life will shift. You will not only come out stronger, you will come out larger. Larger in heart, larger in influence. You will find the right friends. You will marry smarter. You will discover the right line of work, or field of study, and place to practice it. You may even live longer. You will understand the why of your own life. Your identity code is found in the answers to eight questions:
How do you discover your own "identity story?" You must answer each of the 8 questions in turn. Here are what three of these questions ask you to do and an example of how different people did - or didn't - answer that question for themselves.
One of my closest friends in graduate school, Brian, was a star marathoner. He could beat nearly everyone else in our informal roadrunners club by at least 10 minutes, consistently. After graduate school, Brian held a number of increasingly important positions in a large, international public relations firm. Later, he became press secretary to one of the most colorful congressmen in Washington. These posts shared one thing in common: they required serving others, a skill my friend had mastered. Brian had made a career out of pleasing others, always more than himself. I sense that Brian's need to make other people happy began long before I ever met him. Now, when I think about Brian running marathons, I don't imagine him running toward the finish line. Instead, I imagine him running away - from what, I do not know. My good friend never achieved the distance he needed to figure out who he was, separate from those he served.
To answer the question, What is my gift?,
follow the signs of joy. Diane is a flight attendant. As I learned soon after meeting her, Diane chose not to have children. Why she made this choice remains a mystery to me to this day, but that isn't the point. Ironically, she and her husband wound up living on a street that is loaded with kids, from infants to teenagers, and she welcomes them all. When my friend isn't up in the air, she's digging in the earth; Diane loves gardening. In the past few years, Diane has transformed her modest yard into a beautiful garden. She has managed to cultivate raw, unassuming patches of dirt into small islands that boil over with organic art. Diane's smile is never broader than when she is guiding people through her garden. In time, I have come to understand that what blooms in my friend's yard is more than plants. Figuratively speaking, it is her very seed. The way I look at it, my friend's instinctive, maternal need - her basic need to give - had found its natural expression.
Chloe, mother, wife and good friend to many, struggled for years with her love of photography. She wanted more than anything to express this love to the world in no uncertain terms. But her drive was dampened by her fear that she'd be seen as an imposter, a fear she had carried with her for years, born of the fact that she wasn't truly a "professional.." Chloe gradually took on more and more photo assignments, some paid, others didn't, but she didn't care. Not long ago, Chloe's work was highlighted, along with five other photographers, in a major exhibit in her home town, just outside of New York City. The welcome table in the exhibit hall held stacks of business cards for each of the exhibitors. What I remember most was that, at the end of the exhibit, few of Chloe's cards remained. My friend had found the courage to let the world know what she stood for and, in turn, had gained the recognition she deserved. Living according to your identity doesn't happen automatically. How our lives unfold isn't predetermined. Identity isn't a form of fatalism, where, no matter what you do, your life is destined to turn out a certain way. It is the opposite. It is up to each of us to learn who we are and, then, to act upon this knowledge in ways that enable us to realize the potential our identities hold.
Introduction
Despite what you may have been told when you were a child, you cannot be whatever you want to be in life - you are already what you were meant to be. The secret to uncovering who you are, and your purpose, is built into you in the form of a code - the identity code. Much like your genetic code, your identity code provides a complete map of how you were designed to live.
Answer the questions that frame the identity code, and the contours
of your life will shift. You will not only emerge stronger, you will
emerge larger. Large In this life-transforming book, Larry Ackerman shows you how to crack your identity code. With more than twenty years of experience helping organizations and individuals identify their purpose, Ackerman reveals the Laws of Identity and the 8 Essential Questions they encompass. As you answer these questions, your identity will gradually become clear. It will become the foundation upon which you'll make truly meaningful decisions about what work is right for you, build and maintain relationships that matter, and even discover the interests and hobbies that make sense for you. These 8 questions, and the call to action each one implies, are:
As Ackerman points out, unbridled freedom actually weighs you down. The myth of personal freedom - the notion that you have infinite choices in the course you set for yourself - is the unspoken agony of the modern person. True freedom comes with knowing your identity: the unique characteristics that define your potential for creating value in the world, for making a contribution that springs naturally from the core of your being and touches the lives of others. Within this framework, life's seeming boundaries melt away. Intelligent, provocative, and always practical, The Identity Code sets the reader on the classic quest: the discovery of self. Take the journey.
The Eight Questions The identity code is found in the answers to eight questions. These questions are:
At first glance, these questions may appear similar to any number of other life-shaping questions people ask themselves in the course of their lives. Questions like, Why am I here? or, What is my purpose? but these eight questions aren't arbitrary. They come from one source: a series of eight natural laws - The Laws of Identity - which are part of the very constitution of nature and govern our lives like clockwork.
Natural laws aren't a new phenomenon. They've been with us for eons.
Our instinct for self-preservation and innate love of our offspring,
for instance, are also natural laws that shape our universe, just as
the Laws of Identity do The idea that there are laws of nature that frame the choices we make in life, and their inevitable impact on our well-being, may seem far-fetched to you. Most people believe the opposite to be true: that life is a freewheeling experience, and you can never know what's coming next. You will unearth capacities you never knew you had.
Yet, we readily accept that there are laws that hold sway over the physical
world, such as the laws of thermodynamics, which can be scientifically
validated. When it comes The effects of the Laws of Identity can be seen, for instance, by observing the apparent quality of your own life: How content or discontented are you? How grounded are you as an individual? Would you say that you are your "own person," or do you frequently follow the crowd? Do you stand up publicly for what you believe in, or acquiesce to others' opinions? The answers to these questions provide clues to whether or not you are living in harmony with who you are. The closer you are to living according to Identity, the closer youare to being in sync with the natural laws I am referring to. The opposite is equally the case. Not only do the eight questions I put forward flow directly from the Laws of Identity, but how I present them - their sequence - is crucial to cracking your identity code. The sequence of these questions builds in a way that tells a story about how life develops when it is lived through the lens of identity. Without giving away the ending, I will tell you this: The journey you will take begins by finding and embracing a feeling for life you have most likely never experienced before. The feeling I am referring to can't be reached through any of the five physical senses we take for granted: touch, sight, hearing, smell, or taste. Once you have located this feeling, you will wind your way through a period of self-discovery, during which you will unearth capacities you never knew you had - and come face-to-face with trials you never knew existed.
In the course of this book, I will illustrate how each of the Laws of Identity, and the question it holds, shapes a crucial piece of your identity code, and how together these laws add up to a fundamental reality that embraces us all.
Discovering the Laws of Identity I was explaining my belief that there is more to the idea that every person is unique than that truism conveys. My assertion wasn't casual. I meant it literally. There is more at work in the forces of human nature than we know. It has to be that way, I reasoned, because people are born with identities that shape who they are and, by extension, affect what they do with their lives. That conversation rolled around in my mind for well over an hour, as I watched the sun arc across the aspens behind our cabin. Suddenly, I understood what I had been struggling to say: that there are laws of nature that exist simply as a result of being human and that knowing these laws is the key to understanding our uniqueness and potential as individuals. That revelation changed my life forever.
In the hours and days that followed, that insight absorbed nearly all
of my energy. I had opened the floodgates to a well of knowledge within
me that had lain dormant for decades. One perception cascaded into another
in rapid successi In my state of hyperawareness, I sensed the concreteness of Identity. I could almost feel it pulsating inside me. It was the soft rock at the center of what made me, me. Not only did my identity seem tangible, it also appeared to contain a particular structure - astructure, I realized, that was somehow linked to the natural laws I now knew existed. The image that came to my mind in that moment was beautiful. I felt I was watching the bud of a rose open suddenly, unfolding its petals all at once to reveal a small, glowing sphere at its center. There are laws of nature that exist simply as a result of being human. By definition, a person's identity isn't something to be unfurled like a flower, in ways that expose its hidden parts. The opposite is true: identity is the most perfectly integrated expression of a human being there is. Our identity presents nothing less than the "whole" picture of who we are capable of becoming as individuals. The fact that I was now able to glimpse its remarkable composition only heightened my sense of anticipation. In that instant, I understood that the structure my identity contained illuminated not just its beauty but its extraordinary power as well. If I could decipher my identity, I imagined, I would discover the secrets it held - secrets about my special strengths and true passions, and what they suggested in terms of which path to follow and which ones to avoid. Two days later, sitting by a river near our cabin, I watched intently as the trees, the mountains, the cobalt-blue sky, and the late-day sun combined to produce their predictable splendor. From where I sat, it was easy to confirm that life is exquisitely beautiful, as far as the eye can see. But it had taken a different kind of sight for me to recognize how beautifully ordered life is at the core of our beings, where the essence of our selves is formed.
Your identity presents the "whole" picture of
who Identity is beautiful and it is powerful. The natural laws I discerned in the summer of 1996 have proven to be as universally absolute, inescapable, and predictive in their effect on life as the laws of physics, which govern the external world. These are the Laws of Identity:
These laws are the same for everyone. They shape our lives and fortunes even when we aren't conscious of their presence. They are the foundation of the eight questions I presented earlier, the answers to which reveal your identity code.
At times, you may pose the question in calm, contemplative moments, like when you're strolling along the beach at sunset as waves lap at your feet. In these moments, arriving at the answer isn't necessarily the urgent matter; rather, it is a moment of reflection, a "time-out" from the incessant demands of your daily life. In this sense, asking the question, Who am I? is like a small luxury you bestow upon yourself, much as you might allow yourself a favorite treat, but only on rare occasions. At other times, you might ask the question around the fires of growing despair. Your job has become meaningless and boring. Your daily routine seems tedious and empty. The affiliations you've relied upon to define yourself no longer seem sufficient. Am I not a Jones, a Stern, a Tanaka, you may ask - the child of a good family? Am I not a loyal Christian, a pious Jew, a devout Muslim? Am I not American? Or Turkish? Or Japanese, or Indian? Am I not, at least, a hardworking employee? Are these things not enough? If not, Who am I, then? Not surprisingly, your question begs for an answer. It never comes. In fact, you may be any combination of these things; for instance, a Jones, a Christian, and a hardworking American. But none of these labels answers the question, Who am I? That is because, despite their importance in how you define yourself, these labels serve to mask, rather than reveal, who you are at your core. Apart from being a member of any of these groups, you are, in the words of Walt Whitman, "a simple, separate person," independent of the customs, cultures, and conventions society imposes.
This may be a difficult notion to grasp. It may confound your view of
how the world works. It may even cause you to lose your balance, Don't be afraid that once you've stripped away the labels, there will be nothing there. Such fear is unfounded. You are not your labels. You simply are. Learn to appreciate yourself in your most elemental form, free, if only for a moment, of the social markings we all rely on to delineate where we fit in the world. Locating this sense of self is like being born anew. At its fullest, this sensation will make everything around you seem intensely vibrant and animated - as though you are encountering life for the first time. What you are sensing, however, isn't the sum of the things around you; it is yourself in a heightened state of awareness. Discovering that you are here in the spiritual sense connects you to the very roots of consciousness: I am here. I exist. As I was working to decipher my own identity code, I would often repeat to myself, I am Larry Ackerman. Not Larry, son of Jack and Anne. Not Larry, the American, the Jew, or the consultant, or any one of a dozen other labels I could claim. But, simply, Larry Ackerman, the man, the human being. This rudimentary exercise kept me centered. It kept me from taking the easy way out and just accepting the stamps society put on me, before I even knew that it had happened. Finding your "I" is the exhilarating and necessary first step in beginning your identity journey. The answer to the question, Who am I? brings with it the promise of affirmation - nothing less than the awakening of your spirit. It is no great feat to verify that you exist in physical terms. Your five senses do this for you automatically. It is something else entirely, however, to experience yourself as aware and awake, separate from the flesh, bones, and breath we take for granted as standard signs of life. You are not your labels. You simply are. Experiencing this confirmation of life is a prelude to everything else you will learn and do in relation to your identity. Once you have found this feeling of life, you will be ready to discover your uniqueness as an individual and the potential it implies for how you ultimately engage the world.
It isn't surprising that the prospect of achieving such a keen state of being leads one to ask, How can I discover who I am? The way to know who you are is by first defining yourself as separate from all others. Within the context of identity, separation isn't about being physically or emotionally remote from people - physical separation isn't especially difficult to achieve, if that is what you desire, and emotional connections are essential for strong relationships. Separation is about putting some healthy distance between yourself and other people so you can step back and see, really see, yourself within the context of your relationships. How are you different from your best friend, your brother, or mother, in terms of your personality, your values, and your talents? Consider answering these questions to be an exercise in setting boundaries that mark out turf belonging just to you, no matter how close you are to others.
Think about separation as finding some space where you can slow down
and look at yourself and others objectively. The aim is to see people
- yourself included - through fresh eyes. The feeling separation evokes
is similar to the feeling you might have when you learn, or see, something
for the very first time. In that instant, you a How can I discover who I am? What you seek in separation is independence - the ability to think and act on your own and in your own best interests, despite what others may expect of you. Defining yourself as separate from others is about finding your own integrity as an individual. It gives you a place to live within relationships that is all your own, even in moments of greatest intensity: in the sweat of a crowded locker room after a come-from-behind victory; in heated conversation with your parent or child; or in making love, when there is, it seems, only one of you. Put plainly, before you can know who you are, you need to know who you are not. The act, even the prospect, of separation, however, can stir strong, unfamiliar emotions: misgivings and resistance, as well as exhilaration and hope. Each of these is a normal byproduct of the experience. If you are like most people, the idea of separation will spark fear. Fear of being alone, of a kind of brutal rending from your daily routine and lifelines - the relationships you've come to count on as sources of social oxygen. But for all the apprehension you may at first experience, you will likely find that being able to "stand alone" strengthens you. Facing up to the initial discomfort that aloneness may bring is a sure sign of progress. Stay with it. It is part of your passage to discovery. In your efforts to find separate space, you may feel guilty that you are turning your back on people who need you: family and friends, among others. This response is a natural result of caring about others. It is uncalled for, however. In fact, you are developing your powers as an individual in your own right. Whether it takes you six months or six years, operating from the special turf that is yours alone will enable you to contribute to those relationships as a stronger person, with more to give.
You may also feel you are being selfish by taking time to focus on separation,
especially with the express intent of detaching yourself from others
- parents, children, close friends, and associates - who have given
you so much. Perhaps you are. But taking this time isn't What you seek in separateness is independence. The prospect of stripping yourself, even for a moment, of the various labels you have come to take for granted in your life, of exposing yourself to questions rather than answers, is, at the very least, anxiety-producing. It can make you feel as though there will be nothing there but yawning, uncharted space once the quilts and comforters of longstanding relationships are removed. But this isn't the case at all. Know that the shivers you feel running down your spine as you consider entering your separate space are glimmers of life, not the coming of death. You are simply preparing the way, your way, for discovery. Your task is to clear the path so that the contours of your identity can become visible to your eye, unencumbered by the burden of others' expectations.
The Identity Code is published by Random House, December 2005;
|
| |
|
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
|
Finding Your Identity: 8 Essential Questions
are living according
to who we truly are. 
To answer the question, Who am I?, define
yourself as separate from all others. In simple terms, before you can
know who you are, you must first know who you are not. What you seek
in separation is independence - the ability to think and act on your
own and in your own best interests, despite what others may expect of
you.
Within each of us is an overarching drive,
which cries out to be developed and exercised. Call it a gift, a purpose,
or a passion. It is that irrepressible need we have that captures our
imagination and urges us forward. It is something we are compelled to
do, simply because of who we are. Your identity is your gift to the
world.
To answer the question, What is my message?,
declare yourself on the strength of your gift. At some point in your
life, when your identity is clear, it will be time to stand up and be
counted. At that moment, fear of rejection by others no longer matters.
What does matter is letting the world know who you are. It is a moment
of true liberation.
THIS BOOK WILL introduce you to yourself.
r in heart, larger in influence, larger in your
capacity to love and be loved. You will understand the why of your life.
The following
is an excerpt from the book The Identity Code.
. Natural laws are all about action and reaction.
For instance, when you feel threatened, you automatically defend yourself.
If your child is in trouble, you instinctively determine how best to
help him or her. Your response is involuntary. It is entirely natural.
if
not your way. Still, it is the truth. Embrace it and you will find fresh
footing that is sturdier, and more reliable, than what you have experienced
in the course of your life so far.
Define Yourself as Separate from All Others
re exceptionally alert;
all of your senses are operating on edge in an effort to comprehend
what you have just encountered.
Larry Ackerman
is a leading
authority on organized and personal identity. As group director for
the international identity- and brand-consulting firm Siegel &
Gale, Ackerman is widely regarded as the pioneer in the field of identity-based
management. His many and diverse clients include Alcoa, Maytag, Fidelity
Investments, the Dow Chemical Company, Ernst & Young, Norsk Hydro,
Interbrew, and Boise Cascade. His first book, Identity is Destiny,
set forth a revolutionary view of the nature of identity and its fundamental
impact on organizational and leadership development. Find out more
about his new book The Identity Code at