Brett and Speaker A discuss how humans construct their identity through reflection and inner work. The framework involves naming your true self, identifying core values and passions, then integrating them into what they call your opus. Most people stay shaped by family, peers, and trauma instead of doing the hard work to become who they actually are.
Chapters
Well, the hardest job of any human is becoming who they are. We're the only animal on this planet that has that kind of an identity crisis. Every other animal just instinctively becomes who they are. You know, a lion pup becomes an adolescent lion and then an adult lion, and it never wishes that it were a tiger. At least from what we've studied on them. They're very satisfied. They just. They don't. That lion does not wish it were a vegan. You know what I mean? It knows it's a carnivore, and its instincts tell us that's how it survives. Humans, on the other hand, we have the ability to be any number of things. So we come in and we have to discover, like, what are our strengths, what are our gifts, and how do we best become the you we're designed to be? And we have an entire world trying to tell us who to be, who to become, and why. That's who we got to be. It starts early with our family and then with peer pressure from. I just. Just was in a practice with one of your teams and talking about dealing with. A lot of their identity crisis started in middle school with people telling them who they ought to be and it wasn't who they felt they were and who they wanted to be. So we have this tension as humans within us that then leads to tension with others because we haven't taken the time to figure out who we are. So we can then accept people who are different from who we are and learn how to become a team with people that are very. Everybody's unique. And so we help people build their core, we call it, which is figuring out through reflection, time alone, writing, figuring out what are your deepest held beliefs and where do they come from? What are your true identities? The names you call you, not the names people called you. What are the names you call you? I call you an athlete. It doesn't really matter what I call Brett. It matters. Does Brett accept that he's an athlete? Because he is, as well as many other things. And so we help our clients name themselves in a very positive way, because we tend to hold on to some of the names we've been called that weren't edifying. So identity is the second thing. And then principles like what are the values that mean the most to you? And once you've worked on that, we call that your wip, your work in process. Those are the first three elements to your core. Then we work on what are your passions, what do you love, what gives you juice, and what are the core purposes the big whys for why you think you're here and why you want to go there. And then lastly, we help you work on your own process for tightening all of that up. We call that the six pack, the WIP, the 3P. So the first thing we do, and the thing we never stop doing is, is building our own core and our client's core. I'm still working on mine. One of my deeply held beliefs is a work in process right now. It's changing right now. I would not have imagined that even months ago, much less years ago, because all of us are meant to evolve. So of course we're not done. And so that's the work we do. And then once people get clear about that, about, you know, this is who I am, then, okay, well, now let's make a life where our work counts. So now let's look at. Because we're all working. Marriage is work. Being who you are is work. Being a good neighbor's work, being an entrepreneur's work. Being a head coach is work. Being an athlete is work. Being a teammate is work. And so we want people to do work that they labor and love, which we call opus. That's the Latin word that literally means labor of love.
Yeah, it's. It's fascinating. I mean, this is a subject matter that I really feel is like my opus. You know, deep down, the subject of identity, finding yourself, what takes us away from that? You know, the, the trauma or the conditioning or the societal or, you know, like you were saying in that practice, it could be as little as like something somebody said to you. You know, I've read it could be like a dog that barked at you when you were a child.
I mean. Right.
You know, it's a fascinating subject, the process of how we got there and then how we find ourselves coming back to who we really are if we do.
Right.
One of the things that I know is frequently said in Built to Lead is that it's only for the few that there are a lot of people who really don't want to wake up that this work is hard to make an entrepreneurial jump to, you know, kind of look at your relationships. To look at yourself, to make those changes is very difficult because that conditioning is really embodied deeply. And society and our kind of environment will tell us over and over again why we shouldn't do it.
Right, Right.
So it's. It's fascinating and it's really interesting just to be in this conversation with you because as you just said, you know, you're. You're surprisingly revisiting your own. And what I'm sitting here thinking as you're laying out for the audience how built a lead works, which, you know, I've known for the last 12, 13 years, whatever it's been, I'm sitting here thinking I need to do that again.
Right.
Like, right now. I know I'm also revisiting my identity again.
Right.
And. And so it is just very deep and very layered and, you know, a life's work, I think.
Right, right. 100%. Yeah. And, you know, I kind of get depressed when I really think about the statement you made, that it is only for the few.
Yeah.
Because I believe we're all meant to be great.
Yeah.
All of us.
Yeah.
I believe there's no mistakes. There's no mediocre humans. It's not true. And yet it is true that only a few really wake up in this lifetime and do that work, because we are so conditioned to just follow the herd mindlessly.
