Align: An Identity Guidebook

By Jen Smith

In the complexity and speed of modern life, taking time to nurture oneself is often sacrificed to more immediate demands. We struggle to understand our purpose and how we show up in the world. We wonder what our lives are about and if we are making a difference. These are big questions with no easy answers, yet questions worth exploring.

In ALIGN, author Jen Smith shows that the first step to creating a better life begins with understanding identity. In this first book of the ALIGN-ACT-ACHIEVE series, Smith explores the process of aligning which includes examining your values, beliefs, skills, and talentsthose things that make your spirit soar and your energy surge.

Traveling inward, ALIGN guides you through a series of stories, questions, insights, and exercises to help you find your own answers to lifes most important, yet often ignored, questions. It marks the beginning of a journey of a lifetime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491773918

Jen Smith

A PhD student at the University of Sheffield, UK and a marine biologist at Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, who loves the sea and researching plankton and food web interactions. Also, writing, especially for children, is an essential part of the author’s life in order to educate them about science in a very simple, fun and interactive way. This is his first published book in English and he has published a children’s short story in Japanese in 2011 along with two short story-collections in Arabic in 2004 plus writing a play for children that was performed in Kuwait in 2010.

Book preview

ALIGN

AN IDENTITY GUIDEBOOK

Copyright © 2015 Jen Smith.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-7392-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-7390-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-7391-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015912310

iUniverse rev. date: 02/02/2016

CONTENTS

Part 1 What is Identity?

Chapter 1 A Monkey’s Uncle

Chapter 2 A Desperate Search for a Pattern

Chapter 3 The New Professionalism

Part 2 How Do I Determine My Identity?

Chapter 4 Toward a Self-Differentiated Presence

Chapter 5 The Need to be Real

Chapter 6 Escaping the Strappado

Part 3 Challenges to Identity

Chapter 7 A Third Seat at the Table

Chapter 8 The Walrus and the Carpenter

Chapter 9 Colonization

Chapter 10 The Virus of Pluralistic Ignorance

Chapter 11 The Revolution of Rising Expectations

Part 4 Goals of Identity

Chapter 12 The Knights of Infinity

Chapter 13 Infinite Self-Consistency

Chapter 14 I = gV (Ohm’s Law)

ALIGNTitlePage.jpgALIGNMap.jpg

for Dad

INTRODUCTION

My life began in the Real World. For the most part, people, as well as things, were what they appeared to be. Most of the time, people were honest, trustworthy, and respectful of one another. There were exceptions, but these were considered anomalies by adults in the Real World and used as examples for children of inappropriate or unacceptable ways of being in the world. My identity was forged there. I knew who I was.

And then I entered the Bubble. The passage was grand, and I couldn’t wait to arrive. I began to observe the customs and culture of this strange new land, diligently studying the dress code, lifestyle, and must-have accoutrements. I worked overtime to reshape myself so that I could belong here. For, after all, this was where IT was. Success, money, purpose.

My identity became more closely aligned with numbers. The digits on my paycheck. The rating on my annual review. The elusive best credit rating. My salary grade. I was a rising 8 achieving a 4.2/5 performance for the year that garnered a 2.5 percent annual increase that would do very little to pay down Visa bills, which really needed to be done if that credit score was going to budge an inch in the next sixty days—before the finance company ran a report to confirm I was worthy of the mortgage I needed to get that house in the right hood. I was feeling so conflicted about the whole ordeal that only a new designer handbag and dinner at the chic spot that just opened on Main could boost my sense of self-worth. Who was I? An up-and-coming winner—that’s who. I deserved those things: the ultimate goals, the purpose of life.

My husband, Charlie, followed me right down the Rabbit Hole and took to life in the Bubble as rhapsodically as did I. We scoffed at those who just didn’t get it. We made the corporate chant our own personal mantra. We walked the talk and contemplated our value-add to the organization as we worked to be team members who brought something to the table. After all, we had an obligation to the stockholders, those elusive beings who lived just out of sight but were watchful and aware of every frivolous expense we might consider, like ergonomic chairs or new software or—egads—pizza for the team on a late night. Profit was the measure; profit was the goal.

We were staunch supporters of continuous improvement. Who doesn’t love the idea that things get better and better month over month, year over year, into infinity?

We jumped on the bandwagon of cross-functional training. Why shouldn’t we all know one another’s jobs?

We spread the good news of employee involvement. Why not put your heart into it? This is your company, after all. We even invented a word for our roles. Stakeholders. Not to be confused with stockholders. Stakeholders got to take on the responsibility. They were the doers, but most of the monetary rewards accrued elsewhere.

We fell head over heels with strategic planning. So sexy—who doesn’t want to be a visionary?

And then we learned a few things. We learned that continuous improvement was a myth that kept us trying harder and blaming ourselves when things didn’t work out. But sometimes things break. There are bad years, downturns, surprises. Would it really be so terrible if a company’s quarter-over-quarter profits were 1.2 percent lower than prior year because they opted to retain, rather than eliminate, employees even though sales were down a fraction of a percent for a month?

We learned that cross-functional training was a way to proceduralize jobs in order to trim the workforce and then use people like widgets, easily moved from one part of the machine to the other as needed.

We learned that employee involvement was mostly about getting people to sign up for special projects and take on more work than necessary in the hope that they might be noticed and promoted for their efforts.

We learned that strategic planning was … well, need I go further? You get the point. Our Bubble burst. Life—the circumstances of daily existence on earth—pulled back the curtain and revealed a shocking truth. The Bubble has no heart.

Really, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Corporate America is a corporation. Let’s clarify. Dictionary.com will help. A corporation is an association of individuals, created by law or under authority of law, having a continuous existence independent of the existences of its members, and powers and liabilities distinct from those of its members. In other words, a corporation consumes individuals like a fire consumes wood in order to sustain its existence. There is much more to be unpacked from this definition—after all, do you have limited liability when it comes to your life?—but for now, let us move on.

We had two choices: remain in the Bubble and put on a good game face, living an ingenuous dichotomized life, or escape the Bubble.

We chose the latter. But escaping the Bubble was not