How to Be You

By A.K. Finn

Do you ever have trouble trying to figure out exactly who you're supposed to be?

Do you search for some quality or trait that's meant to define the "real you" . . . a blueprint you can use to build and become your best self from?

Do you find yourself caught watching one compelling identity fade into the next in an endless cycle of confusion and immobility?

In How to Be You, I approach my own identity crisis story from several angles to share important lessons I had to learn over and over in different ways.

Discover a simple, comprehensive approach to self-discovery that builds from your fundamental existence as an awareness taking place to your unique [human] mind and the particular way you create and communicate concepts.

Learn to determine your personality "type" without needing any test.

Realize why systems like astrology, numerology, and tarot cards . . . methods that might make no natural sense . . . seem to somehow speak so clearly into your life and circumstances, gripping your perspective with hands that feel like fate or destiny, giving weight to your deepest hopes.

Lock into driving-force values at the base of your being so you can make them your building blocks for a better life.

Gain deep insight into what you want most, and know how to take your own best next steps forward.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A.K. Finn
• Release date: Feb 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201620837

Book preview

Who Should You Be? (The Core of All Identity Issues)

My identity crisis began at 14.

I’ll try to describe it exactly as I would have at the time.

Before 14, there had been a few years of wonderful progress and growth; I’d moved to a new place with my family, made some really good friends, and fully immersed myself in martial arts.

During those good years, every possibility for the future had seemed to naturally weave itself in amongst this big, overarching plan for where I thought my life was going.

Then I turned 14.

Everything inside suddenly felt wrong.

Each part of being myself was now its own impossible-to-solve puzzle.

Nothing flowed or connected anymore.

With martial arts, for example, I could still go through the physical motions; but it was like the spirit or essence of it was somehow missing.

My fight became to either reclaim the hope, innocence, and abilities I’d lost, or to discover something new.

The following pattern emerged to keep me trapped for at least the next decade (or 2)...

First, I’d see a good quality in someone—something I believed I could embody in a cool way.

I’d turn that quality into a blueprint to model my life after.

I’d get so excited as the blueprint consumed my thoughts, words, and schedule.

But then something would start to feel a little off.

Beginning as an unconscious weariness like always having to flex a muscle, the good quality at the base of my new identity began to lose its luster.

By that point, though, I’d already be speeding headlong toward the next compelling quality.

Every quality represented its own potential life for me to throw myself into.

Yet unlike before, when I’d watched qualities combine on their own to enhance my long term goals, I now did my best to ignore the reality of each prospect fading and crumbling beneath an all-consuming lack, void, or disconnect.

I remember frequenting literal mountaintops to make theatrical displays of abandoning old ways and embracing the new . . . then the even newer . . . then...

It’s stunning to look back and consider how I was so totally convinced each time that whichever quality I was focused on would finally be the one to stick—the who I was really meant to be.

What I didn’t see was that having Who am I? or Who should I be? as the focus of my quest was actually what was causing and perpetuating my identity crisis all along.

Who Are You?

Teacher and entrepreneur Lorenz Sell writes,

Identity is the answer to the question: Who am I? Anyone who has ever seriously asked themselves that question may have found that the answer is not as obvious as one might think it should be.

If I were to ask What are you? you might answer I’m a human or I’m a person.

Persons all have personalities.

So What are you? works best as a question about your personhood or personality.

Again, Who are you? is a question about your identity.

Your identity consists of every quality you could be identified with.

It’s helpful to break identity up into two components: culture and self.

Cultural Identity

Your cultural (or social) identity is outward; it’s all the qualities you could be identified with in relation to other individuals and groups.

As philosophy teacher and writer Nathan Placencia describes,

Statuses relevant for considerations of social identity include gender and race, as well as familial roles like being a father, a mother, a sister, or a brother, and occupational roles like being a professor, a firefighter, or a landscaper.

Identity Politics is a hugely popular topic these days, and it centers entirely around these outward cultural identities—how certain groups you could be identified with in society also determine which groups you couldn’t be.

Speaking of clashes between cultural identities, diversity expert Dr. Joanna Rummens writes,

Identities are socially constructed and negotiated. The resulting identifications may be accepted or they may be contested. In many cases they overlap or intersect with other significant—and sometimes competing—identities.

Just as my identity crisis resulted from a search for who I was supposed to be, similar (though far more serious) problems can arise when we attempt to mandate or measure the precise merits of different cultural identities.

I’ll just say there’s a reason I like to use the word culture to speak of outward identities.

Cultures are beautiful (once you know them).

Cultures aren’t laws or levels to be boxed or nailed to, but histories, tastes, ways of seeing and doing things, stories, art...

Without going into it in this series, my belief is that seeing outward social identities as aspects of culture could ironically quell what’s called the culture war.

Self Identity

Your personal self identity is inward; at its core, it’s an assessment of your personality.

It’s important to remember that how you assess who you are is only an interpretation of what you actually are . . . or of what you wish you were . . . or even of what you feel you must pretend to be.

Consider how limited an interpretation based at best on a partial perspective must be, even as Sell confirms:

Each identity is a limited interpretation of who we are.

And that interpretation can easily be clouded by wishful thinking or obligation.

Why obligation?

Why might you feel you should be a certain way?

Often, pressure to be something that doesn’t come natural to what you are originates from aspects of your outward cultural identity.

Therapist, talk show host, and mental health expert Andrea Mathews shares the following fascinating example of how an imposed outward identity can conflict with your authentic inner self:

I have commonly heard people describe themselves as, Well, I’m just one of those people who gives, gives, gives. You know that’s just me. What they don’t know is that there is another me down under all of that, a me that is seeking to be heard, seeking to be known, and seeking to be lived. Those who identify with goodness are often stuck in patterns of behavior that are not true to who they actually are. If you ask them what they want, they do not know. If you try to help them get in touch with authentic belief or original thought, they do not know these either. What they know is that they will feel very guilty if they don’t do what they are supposed to do. And what they are supposed to do is determined by external pressures.

The way your conscious mind works to interpret your identity is by bringing to your attention only the portions of your cumulative experience that best fit your current assessment of yourself.

Science writer and editor Michael Bond says,

Identity is often understood to be a product of memory as we try to build a narrative from the many experiences of