About: Identity
The Most Effective Way to Create Exponential Growth Is By Shifting Your Identity
Defaulting Into An Identity
It is a wet, rainy day on April 6th, 2017. I am on my way to fetch my elderly parents-in-law. I arrive at the stairwell leading down to their apartment and notice a thin film of water covering all the stairs.
Wearing slip-slops, I say to myself, “Don’t slip!”
The last step doesn’t have anti-slip tape, and before I know it, I come crashing onto my knees. The pain sends a shockwave through my body as I scream in agony.
Neighbors appear out of nowhere, assisting me onto my feet and into a chair. My mother-in-law hands me a glass full of neat whiskey, and I gulp it down to numb the excruciating pain.
It is the next day, and I am in the hospital with the radiologist doctor scanning my thick, swollen knees. There is a silence between us, and I don’t dare ask any questions. I am praying that it is nothing serious.
Searching Outward To Create A New Identity
Finally, he breaks the silence with a deep breath. “I have never seen this before,” he says, looking perplexed.
Before I can ask, he says “On both of your knees where your quadriceps attach, it is just black. You have ripped them both off your kneecaps!”
The news hits me like a freight train crashing into a stationary truck.
I grew up in a very dysfunctional home. My mother was an inconsistent, suicidal alcoholic, and my father was a tough, unemotional man.
My older brother’s coping mechanism was to bully and belittle me relentlessly.
Because of my home environment, I felt depressed, inferior, unaccepted, self-conscious, and very different from everyone else.
When I was twelve years old, I came across a picture of a bodybuilder in a magazine.
In my young mind, I thought that if I could be like that, I would be untouchable. I would be admired, accepted, superior, and confident, and nobody would be able to criticize me or hurt me.
I threw myself into weight training. I worked incredibly hard chasing down the day when I could claim victory over my past identity.
The victories came in the real world, winning numerous national titles, culminating in a top ten finish at the Mr Universe competition in the UK. But still, I remained a victim to the circumstances of my past.
Lying in my bed after my surgery, bandaged on both legs from hip to ankle, my orthopedic surgeon comes in to check up on me.
“You sure did a great job on your knees,” he comments sarcastically. All I want to know was how long it would take before I could return to the gym.
You Are The Architect Of Your Own Life
“The bad news is that you will never be able to train your legs in the gym again.
You can train your upper body, but you are going to have to put your cycling pants on from now on,” he says.
“Now what?” I ask myself. “How am I ever going to become that person I envisioned when the means to that end has been taken from me?
In those moments, I ask myself probably the most powerful question I have ever asked myself,
What does this mean?”
By asking that question, I realized that I had the power to be the architect of my own life. I could choose the meaning I give to this experience.
Meaning Creates Emotion
I decided that the meaning of this experience was that God had something bigger and bolder for me to do with my life.
I immediately felt the emotional impact of that choice. Instead of feeling devastated, I felt determined! Instead of feeling lost, I felt a longing to make an impact, make my life count, and an absolute excitement about my future.
But that was just the beginning! What if I could choose the meaning of every experience I had? What impact would that have on the emotions I had felt for all those years, and how would that affect the decisions I had made about who I was – my identity?
I also learned that there was a second component to my identity: the standards I held for my life. I learned that standards are that which you are most committed to and have both a ceiling and a floor.
The floor is your subconscious. It is your past self. It is the patterns you revert to when you are stressed, and to distract yourself. This is why when your identity is based on the limitations of your past, you run patterns to sabotage whatever personal growth you are trying to create.
Over the months after my accident, I was able to shift the meaning of the events of the past so that I became grateful for them because of who they had made me.
They didn’t just happen to me, they happened for me.
My identity completely shifted, so it was no longer based on the past.
I raised the floor of my standards by letting go of the patterns and distractions that weren’t serving me.
Your Identity Is Your Story And Your Standards!
Our identity is created by the stories we tell about our past and our future, together with the standards we set for our lives.
We don’t rise to the level of our strategy, we fall to the level of our identity.
The most effective way to create exponential growth is to shift your identity!
Is your next level of success being held hostage by your current identity?
Free yourself to explore your full potential.
Book your 45-minute call today to discover how you too can achieve exponential growth in the next season of your life!
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What others are saying….
“Michael helped me in his very gentle way to create a vision for my life and business and then to break through the things that were getting in my way of achieving it.
I now truly understand that life is lived from the inside out and not the outside in!”
Tracey Farrow
Somatologist and Business Owner
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Michael Rodd Exponential Growth Coach Core Beliefs
Self-Empowerment Comes Via Responsibility
The first requirement of all personal change is to assume full responsibility for everything that is in your life. This does not mean that the events of your life were necessarily your fault. It does mean that you are response-able. You are able to respond to them in a way that empowers you rather than in a way that disempowers you.
Human Potential Is Nearly Limitless
Provided that they do not violate the laws of physics, the only limits to your potential are the limits you place on the size of your life’s vision, and your belief in your ability to bring that vision to life.
You Don’t Do What You Can; You Do What You Believe You ARE
Your identity drives all of your behaviour and attitudes. You will act in ways that remain consistent with who you currently believe you are. A shift in your identity will cause a corresponding shift in your behaviours.
Your Identity Is Shaped By Your View Of Your Past And Your Future, Together With The Standards You Hold For Your Life.
Your identity is shaped by your commitment to the story of your past, your vision of your future, and the resulting standards you hold for your life.
Motion Creates Emotion
You are more likely to act yourself into feeling than feeling yourself into taking action.
You Choose Your Purpose And Your Passion!
Your purpose and your passion in life are not innate things that you need to “find.” You choose them. They are effects, not causes.
Life Is Always Working For You And Not Just To You
Every experience in life whether great or small, positive or “negative” is working for you. People have costly experiences but fail to take anything of value from those experiences. Your most difficult times will provide some of your greatest insights if you look for them!
The Map Is Not The Territory
Your way of seeing the world is unique to you. Your worldview is shaped by your beliefs, values, experiences, and a host of other filters. How you see the world is not how it is but rather how you are!
Your Decisions Shape Your Destiny
The most fundamental aspect of your humanity is your ability to make choices. Choosing means making decisions about what you want to happen and choosing how you respond to what does happen.
“Failure” Is Feedback
You will only ever fail if you give up. There is hardly ever a linear path to success. If you use your “failures” as feedback to correct your course by eliminating alternatives, you will find your way.
Commitment Is A Statement Of What Is
Your level of commitment in any area of your life can be directly assessed by the results that you are producing in that area.
You Never Lack Resources, You Only Lack Resourcefulness
Whenever people “fail” they blame a lack of resources. They never had the money, the connections, the information, the support, etc. It is never a lack of resources but a lack of resourcefulness. Emotion is the ultimate resource, if you can create the right emotion, you can get yourself to do anything!