A Coaching Case Study By Leslie Dorrans, Health & Wellness and Executive Coach, UNITED STATES
Cultivate Our Identities/Identity
I am a person who sees patterns in people’s behaviors. I have seen these patterns in others and myself as far back as I can remember, however, the relevance of these patterns did not ring out until later in life. This is something I feel had a lot more to do with the wisdom that comes from multiple decades of living and experience with working with addiction, coaching, and adult learning than from just an innate ability to see these patterns.
The pattern that has come up time and time again in the coaching I’ve conducted over the last decade, and the one chosen for this case study, is how the power of having more awareness around how we choose and cultivate our identities plays a powerfully positive role in our resilience, our attitude and our general sense of contentment in life.
Identities/Identity Case Study
For this case study, I describe identity as the distinctive characteristics, beliefs, behaviors, and experiences that define an individual. It is the perception of who one is, and the factors that contribute to that perception. Identity can be shaped by various elements such as cultural background, ethnicity, nationality, gender, personal experiences, beliefs, values, social interactions, affiliations, social roles, networks, communities, etc. It is a complex and multifaceted concept that changes over time and plays a significant role in shaping how individuals perceive themselves and how they relate to the world around them.
Identity is like a special fingerprint that is unique to everyone, it is made of things we like, things we believe in, and the things we do. It is what makes us special. And in that ‘special’ is where the power lies. Identity helps us make decisions and know how to behave. It can provide a sense of belonging, safety, and accomplishment. The identities brought up in my coaching sessions are often items such as mother, father, student, professional (i.e., nurse, teacher, manager, etc.), retiree, caregiver, and homemaker to name a few.
As I have coached, I have often seen our identities as, metaphorically-put, baskets. We all have baskets and we all have eggs. The more eggs in a particular basket, the stronger our identity is around that item. Some of us put a lot of eggs in just a few baskets, some of us have a lot of baskets with just a few eggs in each and some of us have 4 or 5 main baskets with our eggs spread out between them. The count of baskets and distribution of eggs will change as we go through life.
For example, a high school student, Amber (the daughter of a good friend of mine and someone I have coached), has a basket as a student, a volleyball player, a guitar player, and a girlfriend to name just a few of her stronger identities. Amber is particularly skilled in volleyball and has an upcoming scholarship to a major university. Because of this, Amber has been moving more of her eggs into this basket in the past few years. She puts a lot of her time and resources into volleyball — physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Making this an even stronger identity aka ‘basket’, Amber is known and likes that people refer to her as the ‘volleyball star’.She’s motivated by her unique talent, love of the sport, and in her growing success. She believes, as she has told me numerous times, that it’s the key to her future as it will pay for her college degree, plus who knows, maybe even the Olympics. As she puts more ‘eggs’ into this basket, she has had to take out eggs from other baskets, we only get so many eggs. She quit playing the guitar last year and broke up with her boyfriend due to lack of time. She is OK with that because she has decided that the volleyball ‘basket’ is worth the sacrifices of giving some other things up.
This is not so different from any of us. We all have to make choices about where to spend our time and resources. The questions that may arise are: How many baskets should we have, how should we choose our baskets, and how should we distribute our eggs? Regardless of baskets and the distribution of eggs, the real power lies in the awareness of how we build, maintain, and disassemble these identities.
Katrina, a client in her 60’s, decided to retire early from her nursing career – approximately 5 years earlier than planned. Her reasons for retiring early consisted that her husband had been retired for 5 years, they were financially able to do so after the pandemic, and her work felt “burdensome” and “tiring”. Her outcome for the session was to find ways to remove her doubts that she retired too early and figure out how to have more contentment than she had been feeling in the 8 months since she had retired. In the session, she revealed that she wanted to feel more joy and purpose in retirement and that she wanted to stop second-guessing the early retirement choice.
There is extensive research that retirement, marked by social, behavioral, and psychological changes, carries various risk factors linked to later-life depression.[1]This holds especially true for workers who identify strongly (aka, put a lot of eggs in that basket) with their job and company.[2]
With Katrina, several patterns emerged in our conversation: while she was involved in many activities, they tended to only have one purpose and that was to keep her busy. She hadn’t looked at whether she felt those activities added value to her life. As she thought about them during the session, she said they mostly came about because she doesn’t like to ‘sit in silence’. Upon further questioning, she realized she was avoiding that silence because she felt an “uncomfortable emptiness since leaving her job”. She thought perhaps that was because her ‘purpose’ anymore wasn’t as big as it was as a nurse or as fulfilling. She had the belief that being retired meant being a less valuable human and that depression was just something that happened as one gets older.
Upon some of these realizations, we explored what would make her feel more fulfilled. With the awareness that nursing, a huge part of her life from where she derived a lot of purpose and value, was now gone, it was going to be important for her to find some balance with doing something meaningful but also be aware of the reasons she retired in the first place.
At this point in the session after realizing where this feeling of ‘uncomfortable’ was coming from, she had a lot more positive energy and a plethora of ideas around what she could do and was better able to analyze if cost/benefit return on these new baskets she was considering. The understanding of what had happened by the act of retiring, and losing a major identity in her life, had unlocked opportunities and information that allowed her to make choices that not only provided her with more contentment in life but also helped her avoid unconsciously doing things that caused derailers for her and those closest around her (i.e., ‘trying to fix other people’s issues’).
Being Aware of Our Identity and Cultivating It
With the consideration of how one should distribute the eggs in their baskets, my conclusion is that there is no right or wrong way. All options have costs and benefits. Who we are, our personalities, our experiences; those we choose to surround ourselves with, and certainly, our awareness of our chosen identities and the strengths of those identities play a powerful role in our resilience, our attitude, and our general sense of contentment in life. The advantage lies in our awareness of our baskets and our eggs.
A greater concentration of eggs in one basket can lead to fantastic results, for example, Amber and her volleyball identity, with a lot of identity used in that area of her life, she has achieved big dreams, including scholarships, future opportunities, a bit of fame, etc. In our sessions, we talked a great deal about the proportion of eggs in this basket and if she’s good with how her baskets are balanced. Just the awareness of that balance has helped her navigate some injuries and have more conscious thoughts about the future.
I have asked her what happens if/when volleyball ends, either prematurely due to something like an injury or when she needs to retire from the sport, and that gave her some great pause, but just the understanding of the risks and rewards has allowed her to make some proactive decisions on redistributing in other areas of her life. Amber made the very conscious choice to take the greater risk that comes from putting so many eggs in one basket. Some people thrive in the saying with great risks, comes great reward. She is this person. However, just the awareness of how she is choosing to prioritize provides her with more peace.
With Katrina, the retiree, there was power gained from the awareness that she lost an important identity in her life. It now made sense to her why she was feeling shaken and questioning her decision to retire early. The simple fact of being aware of what had happened, allowed clarity around the next steps as well. Her decisions of what to do with her time now took on more magnitude of finding meaningful endeavors that would provide some of the satisfactions she took from her work, but in a way that matched with her new identity of being retired.
Through multiple sessions, as Katrina became more aware of the gap formed from this removed identity, she had the realization that there was a possibility in exploring new purposes and joy and saw the unhelpful habits of going back to items such as second-guessing retirement, being over-active just to fill time and trying to fix other people’s problems, as she put it, “a distraction from feeling uncomfortable in her life.” She compared it a lot to her food addiction where sometimes dealing with past problems that she had dealt with her whole life was easier than confronting an unknown, even if that unknown had the potential to create great joy in her life.
I have yet to see any major downfall from gaining more awareness in looking closer at our identities, with more awareness comes more information, and with more information, generally, better and/or more positively progressive decisions are made. Personal growth is not always easy. However, with growth, comes opportunity.
Being aware of our identity and cultivating it according to our values and beliefs can have a significant impact on our resilience, attitude, and overall sense of contentment in life. It helps us to stay true to ourselves and be more confident in our decisions and actions. Moreover, a strong sense of identity with awareness can also help us to navigate through challenging situations with more ease and grace. Ultimately, it allows us to lead a more fulfilling and meaningful life.
References
[1] National Library of Medicine | 2022 Spotlight on the Challenges of Retirement
[2] Harvard Business Review | 2019 How Retirement Changes Your Identity