Identity Rewrite

The act of a leader is to take the next best action.

When you’re struggling with a challenge to your identity, it’s normal to feel like your whole self needs to react. There is a small part of your self that you can (and that you must) keep free, at least, and it’s crucial that you give that part of yourself the job of the boss, of the leader.

In a time of identity change, you need to invent within yourself, the identify of a care-taking leader. Because you’ll need a leader to lead you through the identity change.

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“If I’m no longer a developer, then what am I?”

Your whole body will want an answer to that question. Your whole being will want to settle to a new word.

And so find within yourself the space to pause, to say “huh, it is interesting that I urgently require a new word. How curious.” That self-caring talk is the leader-self talking, giving you a bit of perspective.

Pretty soon, you’ll be able to spot the deeper belief:

“Unless I change my identity, unless I find a new identity, I’ll be no one.”

That’s super interesting, isn’t it? It is, of course, not the truth at all. You are still someone. In fact, you might have never been “a developer” in the first place.

“I have had the abilities of developing software, up to now. That’s still something I can use going forward.”

With that phrase, the identity is now changed to an ability, to a capacity, to something you have, no longer as something that you are. The self-care leader inside you is at work, and is doing the work to help you through the identify change.

“I have more skills than just the development part. I have other interests and curiosities. I can learn to sell.”

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Pretty soon, you’ll be able to take the edge off, all by yourself, and find a whole new vocabulary.

The act of leading yourself, and leading others for that matter, is the act of pausing, of seeing reality as it is, and doing the next best action. Congrats, you are now, at the very least, a leader.