Multiple Selves

Many of us crave better physical fitness.  We know just buying the gear and subscribing to a gym isn’t enough.  

And buying a self-improvement book that looks good on your bookshelf though you never read it, listening to a podcast or doing the odd mindfulness session won’t create mental fitness either.

No beam of light will fall from the sky and just make of physically and mentally fit because we bought a book, an app or some shoes.

You have to do something.   And for the next few weeks Thriving Leader shorts is giving you tiny things to do that’ll make a difference – like couch to 5k for the mind.

Join the tribe

Ever done MBTI Myers Briggs or other “type indicator” tests in your time?   Maybe you’ve been on a workplace training course and they’ve told you that you’re a “yellow person” or a certain kind of animal.

Most people who debrief on these tests will explain they are situational.  They can vary in results depending on the day, the job you’re doing, who you’re doing it with.  Not radically but enough to remember these are not a kind of diagnosis.

Often in our excitement we don’t hang around long enough to hear the caveats.   A lot of these tests are now online so no-one reads the blurb.   We get put in a tribe.   The tribe tells us who we are.

“Reds” rejoice when they hear their tribe tends to be one shared with many business leaders.  They stop listening before the bit that tells them how many of those businesses failed because of “red” behaviour.

“Greens” are exiled to go make the tea, “Yellows” are planning their celebration party and “Blues” are content knowing they’re likely the only ones who added up the numbers correctly.

Environment is important

As adults we learn through experience as well as information.   All these type tests will bear a different result depending on the environment. 

Since you ask, my Myers Briggs hovers around ENTP.  I know some of those indicators are soft.  Perceiving will swap with Judging depending on the job I’m doing at the time, what’s on my mind and particularly who I’m working for as my head and my behaviour adjusts to their values and their expectations of what’s required

Environment is influential.  Change the environment and we can have very different feelings about ourselves.   Do the test whilst thinking of yourself in another place and you can get a different result.

It’s not who we are that’s different, it’s how we are.   This is the concept of Multiple Selves.

Multiple selves

Multiple Selves means we can have different preferences, perceptions, tolerances and behaviours when experiencing different circumstances.   

“He’s so different when he’s not in work”.      We can’t always see these differences, they’re often easier for other people to spot.

Almost everyone has multiple selves.  We can experience something in different ways.   We have different clothes we can wear but we tend to wear one outfit to work and another with our community activity.  

We’re not forced to do this and once we understand we have the liberty to pick the right outfit that’s going to deliver the best result we have an answer to help with Imposter Syndrome.

Meet Jayne

Jayne has loved to dance since she was a child.   After studying ballet, she continued with dance and now even in older years she continues with dance classes and even amateur performance – it gives her deep joy.

But Jayne in the workplace is very different.   Workplace Jayne declares herself an introvert, shies the limelight, doesn’t like presentations, is intimidated by dominant personalities, scared of critique, convinced even kind words of feedback holds a hidden and negative meaning.

Workplace Jayne has endured experiences that contribute to the way she shows up.

Workplace Jayne is a pessimist – that way she can never be disappointed when people let her down, which they do, or will, eventually – it’s just a matter of time.

Dancing Jayne is the optimist – missed a dance step, keep smiling, the audience will never know

Workplace Jayne is passive and submissive, waiting for things to happen, waiting for permission

Dancing Jayne is active, able to bring people out of their shells to enjoy and love music and movement.

Jayne’s multiple selves never step out of their environments – and that’s a shame.

Single Self and Imposter Syndrome

When we feel Imposter Syndrome we snap to Single Self.   The dread sense of not deserving, not being good enough, comparing ourselves to others in the room, that someone will find out we’re the fraud, becomes all encompassing.

And yet in a parallel context we can see the positive, content, confident, appreciated, valued and productive version of ourselves.   We are not necessarily different.   The different context is convincing us that we are.

Where to find your Multiple Selves

Try this quick exercise out for size:

Where and when are you your private self?   Where when and how are you your outgoing self?

Where and when are you your serious self?  Where when and how are you your fun self?

Where and when are you your cautious self?   Where when and how are you your adventurous self?

Where and when are you your quieter self?   Where, when and how are you your energetic self?

Take note of all these different contexts.

Remember some of them can be within the same workplace.  You may be one person with your team and entirely different in the boardroom.

How to make Multiple Selves magic come to life?

One of the odd but neat tricks of our brain is that it can feel and learn through seeing the circumstance play out in our imagination as well as in real life.

You can make this work for you by checking in with your multiple selves.

Say you’ve that big meeting, you enter the room and around you everyone has their papers neatly filed, you listen to the voices, everyone seems to know the code for behaving.   You are intimidated by the knowledge in the group, their innate self-assurance and authority, their unspoken rituals of being in the tribe.

Dig deep into your knowledge of your multiple self.  Find the moment where in another context you’re self-assured, you have the knowledge, you have that innate self-assurance and authority.  This might be in your church, community group, with your family, your neighbourhood, your charity work.

Rehearse and relive that experience in your mind.   You’ve done this before.

The mind is an amazing thing.   Just rehearsing, imagining and sensing that experience in your mind does amazing things to shift your actual performance.  

Open the wardrobe door and you have lots of outfit to choose from – remember you’re not cast in a single type.   You have a choice.

If you’re happy to do so, let us know how you get on this week tapping into your Multiple Selves.

Love this and want to develop faster and further?

Only 20% of people ever achieve their true leadership & life potential.

Do you want to be part of the 80% that don’t?  Or the 20% that do?

Discover & learn how to sharpen your performance in 2024.

Eradicate your Imposter Syndrome for good.

The next cohort for my six week Better Every Day programme will start first week of January.  

Achieving more without working harder or longer hours.  

Click here and start your journey https://www.ianbrowne.com/better