#069: “Who Am I? Revisited

Some years ago, I wrote an article called “Who Am I?” that turned out to be perhaps my most resonant piece. Episode 069 of The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz is an opportunity to revisit the topic… and my answer to the question everyone asks just might surprise you. Listen to learn… …why questions with fixed answers reflect a stagnant mindset …the healthy reason our identities change over time …how quantum physics defines reality as ever-changing and in flux …why embracing uncertainty enables an aspirational life  …why those who say the know themselves… might have more to learn Is it time to revisit who you are? Let me know in the comments! Want to watch this episode? Transcript of The Possibility Podcast with Mel Schwartz #069 Hi, and welcome to today’s episode. The topic, or the title for today’s inquiry, is simply, “Who Am I?” This is a question that probably most people ask themselves at least once, but more likely far more than once, at some point in your life. Or many times in your life. I wrote an article called “Who Am I” maybe fifteen years ago. After a number of years, I Googled it. It was receiving an enormous amount of views. I had posted it on my website and on Psychology Today, and I found that over time, this article, this had close to one million views, or maybe over a million. Now, this is not because of my being a renowned brilliant author. It is because this question is on people’s minds, they Google it, and it brings them to my article. So. Let me move into sharing my insights and perspectives around this question and what it does. Firstly, the question “who am I” suggests that there’s actually a fixed specific and inert answer. “Who am I? I am so-and-so, such-and-such.” Fixed. Unmoving. Unchanging. If our identity is unchanging, boy, wouldn’t that get boring and dull? If my sense of self, who am I, is always the same through adolescence and early adulthood and middle age and old age, who am I” should remain fixed? That makes no sense. But the description, the answer to the question “who am I,” prompts a fixed, unchanging answer. Now that sense of being fixed and unchanging is inconsistent with reality, with the universe, how reality appears. We have seen that reality is ever-flowing. Always moving, evolving, shifting, creating, dynamic. How can we leave ourselves out of that mix. If we do, under the illusio