Episode 38 Personal Growth in the Age of Instant Gratification: Finding Identity and Meaning

Is your identity largely shaped by the responsibilities you shoulder and the meaning you find in life? I dissect this thought-provoking question in this episode. I venture into the world of finding self-worth and finding meaning in life, not through instant gratification, but by embracing the challenges that come with responsibility. I also discuss the roles of faith, community, and service in forging our identities.

I also shine a light on the current state of our universities that often stifle differing opinions. I believe the art of having difficult conversations and challenging our beliefs is pivotal in our growth as individuals. In our digital age that often reinforces our existing views, it's even more critical than ever to seek out different opinions and have challenging discussions.

I also explore how taking ownership of our lives shapes our identity, contributes to our mental health, and brings meaning to our existence. 

Learn more about Fiona's speaking, radio and consultation services at Informed Health: https://informedhealth.com.au/

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Credit for the music used in this podcast:

The Beat of Nature

Music by Olexy from Pixabay

Transcript

Fiona Kane: 0:31

Hello and welcome to the Wellness Connection podcast with Fiona Kane. I'm your host, Fiona Kane, and today I'm actually going to be talking to you about identity, and I'm referring to a video that I've just watched with Jordan Peterson from the ARC conference and that was just held in London last few days, which this won't come out in that time, but basically it's the first couple of days of November in 2023, depending on when you watch this and he was saying that the conference, the whole point of the conference, was actually reminding people of who they are. That was kind of what he said sort of at the end, and what I found that was really, really interesting is I see this a lot in people today, and particularly in young people is people are quite lost and they're fragmented and they've got these fragmented identities that have no meaning in their lives and they don't know how or where to find meaning in their lives. And a lot of people I find are looking to create an identity, but they're creating the identity a little bit like putting an outfit on or whatever. Trying an outfit, which is fine, but they're creating of an identity is just something they do. It's kind of a one dimensional thing they do at home, watching TikTok videos, whatever, trying to think who am I, who do I think I am, who are you? And that's fine to a degree. However, the truth is that our identity is actually forged, and it's forged through going out and being involved in life. It's forged through going out and doing acts of service, being part of your community. That is how your identity is created. So you can't just create your identity with your thoughts. You can't just think oh, I wonder and I think I see a lot of people that they're trying to do, that They've got this sort of really specific identities that they're putting out there, that that aren't fully forged, grown up identities. They're kind of just suits they're trying on and it's fine to try on different things. We all do that. That's called growing up.

Fiona Kane: 2:53

However, some people are carrying us into the adulthood and I think it's important for us to understand how how life works and how identity works and and how to really feel good about yourself and good about life. And you don't feel good about yourself. So a big thing that we have now is that we're kind of taught that, that as all of those instant gratification things that that make us feel good. So you know, the encouragement now is you know, don't get married, don't have a family, and then you can go out partying all night and stay, watch Netflix all day and lay around in the pajamas and whatever. And look, I have whatever life that is right for you.

Fiona Kane: 3:44

It's not for me to say what you should or shouldn't do, and I know there's lots of variations and everything, and I'm married but I don't have children. That didn't happen for me. There's a whole bunch of reasons why people are where they are, so I'm not making any judgments about ultimately you make your choices and some choices are made for you and all the rest of it. I get that. I get there's lots of variations and I'm not sort of anti, you know, not anti women making choices for themselves and all of that. I'm just talking just generally about how our society views things and whether or not I believe that that's fulfilling all that. That that is really makes you feel good about yourself, and if you do all those things and you feel good about yourself, well done. Good on you. However, generally speaking, I find that it's feeling good about yourself comes from having responsibilities in life, and whatever those responsibilities are they could be different things for different people.

Fiona Kane: 4:43

But essentially the definition that Jordan gives for for what identity is it's the proper union of faith and responsibility. And when he refers to faith, you can see as a religious faith it's totally up to you. But he says faith is the kind of courage that allows you to welcome the possibilities of the future with open arms. And then again, then he says identity is the proper union of faith and responsibility. So the responsibility part is really really important in this, because it's in our responsibility that we learn who we are. It's in our responsibilities that we learn how to interact with other people and it's in our responsibilities where we will find that meaning.

Fiona Kane: 5:37

We don't find meaning in sitting around at home watching Netflix or, you know, hanging around into pajamas watching TikTok videos. It doesn't mean you can't do that. It doesn't mean that's not part of a balanced life, but that's not the place where you find your identity. And it's not the place where you find your meaning Doesn't mean you can't be part of it. Certainly, I watch a lot of YouTube videos that are educational and help me find meaning in life, absolutely. But it's not the whole place where you find your meaning and where you find something that's of value to you, that makes you, that creates an identity for you. So one thing that I found quite interesting, too is he said that. Let me just find he said okay, he said psychologists have discovered in the last 20 years that there's no technical difference between thinking about yourself and being miserable.

Fiona Kane: 6:32

It's the same thing. And think about that. Think about that, because what we're being taught today and what we're being encouraged to do today, think about ourselves all of the time, and I'm, of course, I'm not saying not to think about yourself, because it's something I do with my clients all of the time, as encouraged them to connect with their body and be present, and you know, notice the language you're using, and all of that. It is important. So it is important to have some self reflection.

Fiona Kane: 7:00

However, if we spend 24, seven just thinking about ourselves, that is what makes you miserable, right? And then what I see is people, when they do this you see that they do they start to develop sang, to social anxieties and they start to think, oh, I can't go out because people are going to think strange things about me and people are going to say this or people are going to say that. So that sort of ends up being this self perpetuating thing because you don't go out into the world and because you don't go out in the world, you don't learn those skills and then you're afraid to do the thing because you think you can't do the thing and goes around and around in circles. So thinking it's spending all of your time just thinking about yourself is not how you gain happiness in life. It's not how you create your identity. It's not how you create something that sustained you, because in life, ultimately, it's about learning how to do something that sustained us, because life can be really hard. Life has all different aspects to it, but it can be and is really hard. There's lots of stuff in life that's really really hard in Netflix videos and not going to sustain you. You do need to find something that will sustain you. So really, what I try to do is just encourage people to find things to do in their life that sustains them, and that starts with the clean your room. Make a bed, learn how to be as a citizen, just in your family, for starters. Learn how to talk to other people, learn how to be with other people, but then go out into the world and and do give back, do things for others, right, so you obviously can do that at home to, you can do kind things for other people. But you go out into the world and I know that I started work full time when I was 16 and I have worked in so many different places.

Fiona Kane: 8:54

So I have worked in the mining industry and the building industry and the volunteer and sort of Not for profit area and in nutrition clinic and in dental surgery and in health food stores, right. I've worked in lots of different places and I have worked with people who Were mostly conservative. I've worked with people who are very, very, you know, left and sort of socialists, that kind of personalities and people that that's that sort of sort of beliefs. I've worked with people who are very, very rich, very, very poor and all different kinds of people from All different backgrounds and you know all of the rest of it. And that is really, really good for me, because I got exposed to a large number of opinions and ideas and I also I learned how to talk to people about different ideas and how to have no friendly chat or debate about a topic, right, because that's the other thing that's happening now that I see is part of my. I'm creating my identity, and this is who I am thing that we do from our bedroom in front of our computer Is we get, we form this very defined identity of. Well, you know, we just find it. Whoever it is that we relate to and I can, I'm that, so I'm always going to be vote for this party or that party or whatever it is and we get.

Fiona Kane: 10:33

What's happening now, and what I'm seeing looking at what's going on in universities at the moment, is that Young people are not being taught to have to challenge their ideas or to have difficult conversations, and what happens in our world that? Because Because we've got our social media algorithms that essentially feed us what they want us to say online, right, so they feed us what we want to hear. So, if you want to look up videos that are to the left or to the right or whatever other topic, whatever it is, but if you look up certain kinds of videos, it's all information or whatever. It's going to show you more of the same. It's going to show you more of the same, and so you only ever see one side of the situation and you might think you're absolutely right and you might be absolutely right, but sometimes knowing the other side is how you know you're absolutely right. You know, how do you know that you're absolutely right if you don't know what the other side is? But what we do is all the other sides evil and bad. So I'm not going to even listen to that. I just want to because I already know I'm right and how. You don't know that you're right. Maybe or maybe. Well, maybe you do, but, however, I would argue that if you're young person, or even an older person, even my age, that is worth exploring. You know, I constantly challenging am I right about this thing? Is there something else I could learn? Because the more that you do that, the better off you are.

Fiona Kane: 11:53

And so what's happening I see in universities is that People are being taught certain narrative and students are saying that they feel unsafe to have Different opinion or another speaker come along who has a different to different beliefs or different politics, and that is really, really dangerous. So if you create your identity in your online world at home with not really any input except for just getting the feedback for whatever it is, you decide that you believe and then just that's all you get, confirmation bias on is whatever that belief you have, and then you go to university and you're getting the same thing there and you're shutting yourself off and sort of saying, well, I'm not going to, I won't even listen to a different speaker, I won't have a debate. I was even hearing one today where it was a debate that there was a debate happening somewhere in the US and the some people some people got offended or something in a debate, and then the person was saying oh well, you know, debates not really about what did I say? They said the debate is actually just about making sure everyone feels safe. No, debate isn't about making sure everyone feels safe. A debate is about learning how to have a robust conversation and defend a topic. It's not necessarily about winning or losing, but it is about having that robust discussion where you are sharing of ideas, sharing of opinions and a challenging of your ideas and opinions.

Fiona Kane: 13:25

And if you find that unsafe, that's something you need to work on, because being a human being in this world, functioning in this world, means that you're going to be exposed to a lot of different things, and why that's good to be open minded enough to know that maybe there's things in there that you don't know or that you could learn, and I know that I've throughout my lifetime, I have changed my opinion about many things many times. So you know, you might think you're fully formed, but maybe you're not. And new information comes along and then new things happen in the world, right? So what was you know? What you felt really passionately about 10 years ago? Now you do. You don't all. You feel it from a different angle or is different. There's a different way that you approach it, whatever it is, but being afraid to have conversations with people who disagree with you being and wanting to be safe all the time.

Fiona Kane: 14:17

I hear all of this stuff about being safe constantly and I can understand safety in the old fashioned term of safety, with you know, being safe, that you know you're not gonna someone's gonna come and kill you or something like that. So, yes, safety as in being in a safe environment, I get that. But this is a different thing. This is like emotional safety and it's safety from hearings and opinion that might upset me or that might challenge me, and I would argue that if you find certain opinions and certain conversations upsetting and challenging to you, they are the conversations that you need to have because the human beings, that is how we learn, that is how we create our identity and I there's so many examples I could give in my lifetime of where I was having conversations with people and I thought I was right and I thought I was great.

Fiona Kane: 15:13

And as the conversation went on, I realize that I was being an a-hole. I realized I was this really ignorant, really stupid. I realized that, you know, I was just completely wrong about something and I only figured that out because I explored the conversations with other people and I was open enough, as hard as it was, to hear it and he like and see myself reflected in them and go, wow, and the amount of times that I've seen that reflected and seen. Oh, I thought I was a nice person and I've just been not being. I thought I was really smart, I thought I had it figured out and I didn't. And I only learned that because I was brave enough To have difficult conversations and to like and I'll read books that I might disagree with all by all those I disagree with. I'll watch videos or conferences or lectures or I have discussions with people who are different to me and I do that so that I can constantly challenge myself.

Fiona Kane: 16:18

So this safety that you are looking for, that you think is going to keep you safe. It's not safety at all, it's actually the opposite, because it's what's going to make you fragile. It's going to keep you ignorant because you only ever got to go so far in your learning. If you kind of get to a point, you say, okay, I've got it all figured out, I'm right, full stop, end of story, I'm not going to listen or hear anything else. That's going to keep me just trapped in one place for ever and ever and you're going to be very, very fragile.

Fiona Kane: 16:50

And so if you want to be anti fragile which is what I encourage for a healthy life, that's, for healthy Physical and mental health we need to become anti fragile. And you become anti fragile by getting used to hearing different things that challenge you. And if, like I said, if, if something really does challenge you and you find it really hard to hear, there's a good indication that it's something that you need to hear, because the things we need to hear the most are often the hardest things to hear, and I know that I've experienced them a lot in my lifetime. Because we gotta be real with ourselves to create that life that we want, to Reach the goals that we want to achieve in our life. You know to. To have that, to remember who we are, to have that identity, it needs to be forged. Like I said before, your identity needs to be forged and it is forged from doing the hard stuff, and the hard stuff also includes this life and living. It means going out and getting a job and it means doing jobs you might not like.

Fiona Kane: 17:56

I've certainly done jobs where I've had to clean toilets and, and you know, suck the spit out of people's mouths in a dental surgery and unpack the boxes in a health food store and mop the floors and you know, and that's I know, that's not super hard jobs and people have much harder jobs than that. I've had all sorts of different jobs and and they're all were really really important and I've been to the nobody in lots of different places and the young person and the person that people laugh at or ignore or call names or all sorts of things. I've had all sorts of experience in my working life and it's all been really valuable. I've learned a lot and you also just learn that. You know. You learn the value of yourself and you learn who you are by by facing challenges. Right, and so and it's a challenge is that I've had in my Like, having a business has been very challenging. I've made a, failed so many things in business. I really got so much wrong and had so many failures. I've also had some wins in there as well, but it says struggles and those hard times again. That's, that's what you learn from.

Fiona Kane: 19:04

And so when we're talking about creating identity, to create an identity and to create good mental and physical health, you can't have safe spaces. For that you have to have challenging spaces. It doesn't mean you can't come home and you know in between and have your safe space in between and like it's important to have that. That's just called having boundaries. So having boundaries is healthy. And choosing when to engage in certain conversations and when not to, and when to take a break and kind of De-frag or go home and write your diary or whatever it is, just to sort of figure things out, that's perfectly fine. But the idea that we need to have a safe space from ever hearing anything that we could possibly disagree with, all that could possibly upset us, that is madness and that is if you want to have this fractured identity and be really, really fragile and really open to lots of harm and harming yourself mostly to. That is how you go about it.

Fiona Kane: 20:09

So I ultimately I would encourage you to watch the video, jordan's video, put the link in for you. But essentially, that kind of understanding that identity is the proper union of faith and responsibility and that responsibility what happens is it connects out to the world. So you do the right thing Within your home and within yourself, as in see yourself you become, you create good mental health for yourself, then you can do the next thing by being supporting your family and all your friends or other people around you, and then the workplace and where whatever else you do and that kind of just go connects out to the world. So it's like a pay it forward thing. When you have good energy and when you have goodness in you and when you take responsibility, you encourage the people around you to do the same thing, and that sort of is what that's human flourishing. Right, that's what creates human flourishing.

Fiona Kane: 21:03

Human flourishing does not come from just like. What do I feel like doing? I just want to watch this video and do this thing. I'm doing that sometimes absolutely fine, but you know you get very bored very quickly if your whole life, every day, is about what I want what I want to watch on Netflix, right, that is not fulfilling in any way and it doesn't create sort of a sort of a healthy human being. It is really important that you know you throw yourself into this life wholeheartedly and learn and challenge yourself and, you know, take that responsibility honestly.

Fiona Kane: 21:41

The other thing here that I found was was really really great. I just want to find it here because I had wrote a note about it. But when we take responsibility Jordan just had a really good language around it, so I just want to find it here yeah, he said, in the burden of responsibility, which is not actually a burden it's the greatest opportunity you could possibly have. But the meaning of life emerges in the struggle, and the struggle is when we take on that burden of responsibility. So what we do is we sacrifice our base needs, our kind of instant gratification needs. We take on burdens, responsibilities, and we struggle in those, because life is a lot about struggle. We show courage in those moments, through that struggle, and we find that that responsibility that feels like it's actually a burden is actually a great opportunity, and that is how we forge who we are. That is how we forge our identity.

Fiona Kane: 22:45

So it's about sort of sacrificing the sort of immediate gratification stuff a lot of the time and doing something for the greater good, and it's weird how people don't understand. It's like, you know, make your bed or clean your room or whatever, but that's where it starts. So essentially, it's like if you have your house in order, you can put out to the universe something for everybody else, and so on and so forth. Where is? If your house isn't in order, then you can't, then you don't put that energy out to the universe and you can't really you don't connect in with the universe as well. So, but getting your house in order starts by, you know, making a bed, get out of bed, get started, have a shower, go out to the world and, you know, if you can't get a job, volunteer somewhere, because that is really really good for you. Again, it's just about having a responsibility and having as funny, because a lot of things in life we see as a negative thing ultimately end up being a positive thing, like responsibility and like burdens, because that is where meaning comes from. Okay, so if we want to have meaning in your life, then we need to have responsibility and and that means you know, looking after yourself and then going out and helping others as well. So I hope that makes sense. Like I said, I'll put the link into the video in, but I just really want to.

Fiona Kane: 24:12

It's really important to understand that to create a healthy identity and good mental health, it requires you to go out and live life and learn who you are, learn who you are not, and it's a forged thing. You forged your identity. Not forged as in copy, I mean forged as in created. I'm sort of thinking of like metalwork, and where they forge, they create something, where they make something. So that's what I mean by the word forged. It's like something that you create. So you've got this, or I'm even just thinking in woodwork or even in, you know, ceramics or whatever another wheel, where they've got the wheel and they've got the what's that stuff called clay? They've got clay there. I think it's called clay. I don't know I could get the name wrong. I don't know if I'm the day wrong, but you know it's just a nothing or it's just a plain thing and they forge it into something else. But metalwork is a particular one.

Fiona Kane: 25:00

I think that analogy works best, but you get what I mean. Forge is in like as in like butterfly, you know getting its way out of the cocoon. It has to work hard to get yourself out of there and then that can fly. So life is the same, identity is the same. You actually, you get your identity by going out and learning that you're foolish and silly and whatever, whatever. But then also learning that you're smart and you make a difference and you help people. And someone one day will say to you you know that thing that you said to me that time, god, it made a big difference, it changed everything. And you might not even remember the conversation, but someone will come up and say something like that to you Over time. When you start getting feedback like that, you kind of know okay, I'm an all right person, it doesn't come out of nowhere.

Fiona Kane: 25:50

I had lots of time of being a real ignorant, so-and-so when I was younger, and I'm sure I can still be that now, because we are all capable of that. But you know, I didn't give up then. I just kept going and kept turning up and kept showing up. And it's the showing up and the showing up and the showing up and the showing up is how you create your identity and how you create your life and how you create meaning and, you know, getting. What sustains me is knowing that I've made a difference.

Fiona Kane: 26:18

Not whether or not I watch the latest Netflix thing, not saying I don't enjoy my Netflix I absolutely do. Just saying that life is not about the Netflix thing. It's actually about finding your identity, creating and forging that identity and making a difference in your own world and for others. But anyway, I will leave it at that. I hope that made sense and I'll talk to you all again next week. Thanks so much. Please don't forget to, if you can write a review or whichever wherever you're listening to or watching this, I would really appreciate it. Reviews and likes and shares and subscribes and all of that, please. It makes a really big difference. Other people will hear more about it and make a big difference for me. I'd be very, very grateful. Anyway, thank you. Hope you have a great day. Talk to you soon. Bye.