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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Series 2, Ep23: Who do you think you are

 

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EPISODE NOTES

 

Taking up the power to self define

means reorganising your relationships to all things

from the inside out

instead of the outside in.

This kind of journey is profound. All encompassing. And transforms even the mundane aspects of your life.

 

Because it starts in

how are YOU with YOU?

Do you like you?

 

Maya Angelou said 'Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.'

An unmasking journey starts with PERMISSION to know what you like.

Permission to know,

with the kind of knowing that comes to you naturally

and to feel the knowing of what you like

as a truth.

One that you are worthy of building your life around.

Building your livelihood around.

 

TRANSCRIPT:

 

 

[00:00:00] Today's episode of the Unmasking Unschool Podcast is the culmination of four bridge episodes from this podcast to the next one, and this final episode is called, who do you Think You are? Ultimately? Any journey of unmasking, of becoming more of who you feel yourself to be inside of, no longer editing and hiding and compromising.

This is a journey to reclaim the right to define who you are to yourself and also in relationship. And so this is partly about knowing the edges of you, knowing where you stop and not you begins. And of having a relationship to the idea of what self even means. That allows for all of the ways in which [00:01:00] we cannot ever really know who we are.

As one of my first ever coaches said to me, "self", self is just who you're being right now. And I found that a very useful frame to. Allow myself to not know and to find out by coming into the present moment, but also to consider that who am I being right now is a product of a lot of different things. And some of those things are things I didn't choose, and some of them I have agency to choose.

And there is a, a power that comes with taking up that agency to choose. For example, what you are focused on, how you are interpreting your experiences, the story you're telling, how that leads you to feel, the meaning that that creates in your body and therefore what you then end up doing, and therefore the infants that you have to shape what your reality is.

And so the [00:02:00] agency to take all of those up as areas in which you get to. Determine your focus, the way you're thinking, the way that you're feeling, and how you're being and what you're doing, and therefore also the reality that you are building. Shows you that who you are and what your reality is are deeply intertwined and inseparable.

You are constituted through connection, right? Who your being is. Also about what your environment makes possible. It's about how you are received and. What parts of you are welcomed out of you? What is accepted and allowed and normalized and taking up the power to self define really is a reorganization of your relationship to all things, including yourself from the inside out instead of the inside in.

[00:03:00] So that your environment isn't the thing that is defining your sense of self, but rather your connection to what could be, and the reality that you would choose is what is the source of defining who you are. And that might include a connection to. Future. It might include a connection to the world that you want.

It might include a connection to your ancestors, your lineage, or the people around you. The people who have lived before and after you, and the ways in which the. Meaning you choose to give your life feels to you, right? How does it feel from the inside out? Reorganizing to honor the fact that you cannot ever know who you are and there is a beauty in the not knowing.

There is a joining with the present moment to be in the discovery of that, to be in the finding out, right? Who [00:04:00] am I being right now? Does it feel like me? Does it honor everything that I want to be being? And so this journey is profound. It's all encompassing. It transforms even the mundane aspects of your life because it starts not in who are you, but how are you with you?

How do you feel about you? Do you? Like you, Maya Angelou said, success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it. And I love this. An unmasking journey. Therefore, starts with permission to know what you like. Permission even to know you, feeling the knowing of what you like as a truth, as a resonant experience in your body of I want to move towards that.

I want more of that. And also permission to know that you are worthy of building your life according to what you like and of building your livelihood according to what you like. [00:05:00] This is the cognitive justice of neurodiversity being fully expressed, right? What is the point of neurodiversity? It's that your inner being, your wellbeing, your way of being, your way of knowing.

And the ways of knowing that arise in relationship in ways that make you feel connected, your values, your tastes, your desires are able to be extended and expressed into the material structuring of your relational existence. You feel real. You are not just inside you, but you are also reflected outside of you.

You are also invited out of you into the outside and it's that that will lead to you feeling seen so often. The desire to feel seen when that so often hasn't been your experience can lead to the idea that you need to. Know yourself that you need to [00:06:00] assert an identity that is fixed, consistent, stable, that is legible and can be known as a fact, as an identity that other people can see.

And that is how you'll feel seen. And like any identity that gets read within an oppressive epistemic ordering where there's a dominant knowledge that decides and defines who you are. And what this leads to is just arguing for the right way to be seen, justifying, explaining, feeling like you aren't enough of a particular identity to belong within it, and trying to mold yourself in a way that gets seen.

Right? And so the relationship to, uh, the outside world and how it reads you and how it seeds you. Can leave sometimes no room for the hybrid [00:07:00] aspects of who you are and your identities or the shifting parts of you that take turns at the front. Or for cultural nuances or cognitive nuances that don't survive.

Translation beyond the context in which they arise, or identities that you are reclaiming, redefining lineages that you are retracing that you are. Also on a discovery journey with it leaves no room for recognition that you are a complicated mix of influences. You are a self that cannot be fixed, that cannot be separated from your surroundings, that your surroundings are changing all the time, and that you are different versions of you in different places with different people.

And also no room for the ricochet of geopolitical events or a genocide that's happening, and how much each of us [00:08:00] differently are carrying that as a weight and as a defining influence on. What does it feel like to be alive right now and who am I when that is happening? And I'm unable to stop it when I'm unable to feel much power in relationship to destruction that's being orchestrated above our heads.

So the idea of self as fixed sometimes doesn't. Allow for all of the complexities, and yet there are also aspects of you that can be identified that have identity and that are culturally shaped, that are socially shaped and that are linguistically shaped. And so this question of identity of self, of who are you and how do you be that self is.[00:09:00]

Very individual and specific, but also deeply relational and deeply contextual. And so your self conception, your way of thinking about who you are, the associations and the thoughts and the ways that you have witnessed to who you are being, that being something that you get to define is so key because of how much who you are being contains the power to line up with two truths.

What is conditionally true circumstances that you didn't choose or that you were born into that happened to you or are happening to you that are a past version of you, or are how people have related to you, aspects of yourself in the examples around you or not? And another truth, which is the desire that emanates from deep within you of what you want, what you would like.[00:10:00]

What is the world that you would like, that you want to enact as true and real and possible? What is a future worthy of your action towards it? What is the reality that you want to be living, and therefore, who is that version of you? Liking yourself. Liking what you do and liking how you do it is also wanting yourself, wanting what you do and wanting how you do it.

Like having the things that you are being doing and how you do it. Be things that you are also at the same time desiring and it's in that desire that you have the most agency. As long as you are also acknowledging and being with and not bypassing what is conditionally true. And so when you've acknowledged and realized and are connected and present with.

What is that is beyond your [00:11:00] control, that your particular path and your journey is yours, of recognizing that you have done the best you possibly could with what you knew you as you are, are worthy of you liking you. There is a, an acceptance of your current self that allows you to also then connect with what else could I choose?

Okay, this is my starting point. This is who I currently think I am, but I also get to choose what I want and what I like Next, the liking, the desire for your work in the world to be highly valued without compromising who you are, without denying or partially being or hiding or performing, can feel like a giant stretch for your current self.

Or it can feel like it's something that other people get to experience, but not you [00:12:00] because of who you are, and it's the because of who you are. It really matters who you think you are because that contains the rules and the ideas that you have access to. And when you understand that you have choice in who you are, you have choice in who you think you are, that the way that you consider yourself, the way that you, the associations that you have, the feelings that that conjuress within you.

Are areas of choice. Then you also get to choose to become the version of you that has more of what you like and more of what you want. It's simple when you know how. And it's simple because 90% of this work is just awareness. It's just allowing and accepting into your awareness. Who are you being right now?

How do you think about yourself? How do you talk to yourself? How do you relate [00:13:00] to the messages in your body? What do you associate with all your different identities? Which ones are you proud of, and which ones do you hide? Which ones do you lead with and which ones are you thinking of as bad or not enough or wrong?

Knowing that you have choice in that, stepping into your power to author, the idea that you have of who you are is also the power to shape and author your reality, the way that you relate to everything and the way that you show up to it. And so when it comes to your work and the idea that your work could be highly valued without compromising who you are, that can feel like a giant stretch because it can feel like that is something that other people get to experience, but not you because of who you are.

That because of who you are, you have to leave parts of you behind. There can be a way that you relate to your dreams and [00:14:00] aspiring for more, aspiring for what you want, where there's a kind of bargaining and negotiating with parts of you that don't get to come into that future. And what I'm saying to you is no.

All of you gets to come forward. All of you. That feels like you right now. That feels like more of what you like. And the parts of you that are received ideas that you don't want to agree with that don't feel good, you also get to leave those behind, including what might be some of, uh, protective armor that has existing value systems of who gets to get it.

The professionalized credentialized culture fit people or the past versions of you that made it work somehow. You get to decide for yourself that that doesn't have to be who you are going forward. That doesn't have to be your future. [00:15:00] There's another side to this that I want to bring in around the value of your work.

In my experience of art world and creative industries, and also activists and left-leaning spaces that I have been in, and also my own upbringing. I have experienced what I now think of as a wildly misplaced distaste disliking for talking about and considering deeply how money and trade and business work, how value systems function, who gets to set the value systems, who are the decision makers, as if talking about or wanting money in a monetary system is itself unethical.

As if it makes you a greedy catalyst to think about how all of this works, and it's an attitude that I believe enables unearned privileges to stay unconscious, [00:16:00] and also enables only a select few insiders. To be brought into an understanding of how these systems work and when you're considering a self that can create value in the world.

What we are really doing is we are entering into a realm of self-educating, self edifying in what value even is, and also why certain people have been in the position of power to determine what value is. That creating value within a predetermined, fixed flow of resources in a particular industry or sector or field, or an organization.

When you're interacting with that, it can make it seem like creating more value for yourself and therefore creating more value in that work is going to only be possible if you're creating more of what is already valued. That feels like that is going to mean tricking the [00:17:00] system, working harder, overgiving, hustling, trading time for money, like hiding parts of you, as I said, convincing people, tricking and slick, salesy, peddling.

Faking it till you make it, and opting essentially into a system of extraction, whether it's extracting from yourself or extracting from other people. And so of course you don't want to be that person. You will resist being that version of you. You will resist being that who, if that is how you create value.

And then if your safety, your financial, your economic safety is also tied to creating more value in that way, then of course you are in the exhaustion of moral distress, right? So. When we don't look at all of these systems, when we don't consider, what do we mean by value? Who gets to create value? Who gets to define what value even is?

We end up with a reality in which we [00:18:00] are only seeing the choices that are presented from outside and aren't valorizing. The instinct, the inner knowing, the inner values, and so working for what you don't believe in, for what doesn't reflect that inner self has you stuck between conflicting needs and beliefs.

It has you stuck between inner self and then a version of you that you have to be for the outside world. And so of course the belief that who you are is someone whose morality is proven by you charging small fees, accepting what the system or what other people, or what organizations can afford jumping into their pockets to see what value to assign to your work based on what they have.

Fitting in with a system of scarcity waiting to be discovered and given permission and focused on predetermined value [00:19:00] systems and how your work fits within them. And this chimes with a deep belief if you have it, that who you are isn't someone that gets to have your work valued, recognized, sought after, and seen, or more subtly, that you'll have to compromise who you are to yourself in order to have that happen, that you are wrong for putting your head above the parapet of received thinking to consider that, yes, you want to receive.

And so being a self-starter, being someone who is self-determining the ideas or the insights or the strengths or the ways of doing things that you are building a livelihood around, even if that is within a particular industry or field, it is also being someone who is deciding to shape how resources flow from you and flow to you.

And therefore deciding to shape and define [00:20:00] what has value and therefore who you are being is someone who can do that. And obviously this isn't taught, this is why. Like it's so easy to readily walk into a predetermined system and accept pre-given standards and have your options reduced and feel like there isn't room for all of who you are.

The power to decide and define what has value isn't taught, and so there's a power in your skill to shape your own belief system. To grow your own capacity to determine value for yourself and then to define who you are in creating it. That you are someone who gets to do that, that you are someone who can shape this world.

You are someone who can contribute to our shared futures in a way that is specifically yours. That is not happening in spite of who you are, but because of all of who you are, that you are someone whose identities all can be part of what is [00:21:00] transformative about your work. That you are someone who can cut against the grain of what was and what is and trust in what could be.

Because what could be is coming from is seeded in. Who you are to you, how you relate to what is in you, in your spirit, in the spirit of being of service to something bigger than you in the work that is calling you to bring something new into fruition in the material plane and that you believing in it ahead of time, you believing in the version of you who's done it ahead of doing it is how you make it happen.

It matters who you think you are. It matters the associations you draw on. It matters what you are connected to and who it matters, how you conceive of all of your identities. It matters how much value you ascribe to the knowledge is, and the insights and the experiences, the ideas, and how much you honor the complexity of your truth [00:22:00] in how you think of who you are.

So there is so much to who you are being and who you think you are In Flair House. This is the skill of power up. It takes practice before it lands in your body because it's all about you getting on board, all of you with a reality that you want being possible. My own transformation this last year has been entirely down to this tool.

I found a new level with it, which is. A new level of choosing and connecting with the identity, the version of me, the self-concept that I am story that had already created what I wanted to create this year. It scared me. It also energized me. It also. It infused me with a new encoding of what reality is.

It opened doors in my thinking. I made decisions that didn't feel available. I set new standards across my [00:23:00] life and I connected to a self that had already done it. And when what's done is the energetic place that you operate from, that you decide from, that you interpret your current experiences from, it brings about.

What you want to create being done fast, as you know, this is the final, final episode on this podcast. The new one invites you into a new journey, one that is less about unlearning and more about the claiming, the building of the futures that are contained within you and the work that is you expressing the self that you want to be being.

You deciding that who you are is someone that can build that and that no longer needs to hold back from it. That people are waiting for, and instead of you waiting, it's you [00:24:00] being that ahead of time. This is what unlocks the experience of that self being seen. Your economic, relational, and energetic structures.

Seeing you, there is a surprise, an awe that follows this kind of transformation. There is a shedding of a skin. There is a letting go of a lens. There is the welcoming of a new set of experiences, new evidence that defy. Who you thought you were. There's also a grief and a gratitude. Your new self cost you, your old one, the old self got you here, but cannot take you there.

The new podcast is called Valorize. If you open the show notes, you'll find a link to the trailer where you can subscribe to the new podcast so that as soon as the first episode drops, you are on this [00:25:00] [00:26:00] [00:27:00] journey.

 

 

 

 

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