Who are you?
I mean, really, who are you without the details of life like your gender, sexual identity, role in the family, world citizenship of ethnicity or where you live, your religious or political affiliations, educational or professional achievements, or how much money you have?
Some base their entire lives on these external details of life which cause the trajectory of desires and dreams to miss the mark, perpetuating an endless quest to find fulfillment.
Often, the big life questions (BLQs) of “Who Am I? Why Am I here?” come up when the other shoe drops, a chapter closes to create a tipping point such as a death, divorce, illness, or disappointment on the job, stripping away the details of life. They declare:
I cannot, will not, don’t want to go on as before.
I found that the BLQs softly follow us until they’re answered.
I was born under someone else’s identity, their north star. I was born to replace my dead sister. My family was so overjoyed that they gave me the north star of joy hoping that I would fix their sadness and be a joy to the world.
I chased the details of life by doing well in school, achieving greatness in the corporate world, unwittingly living a false identity.
Joy for everyone else but never for me.
I never knew why I always felt terror and domination until my tipping point. While working 14 hour days in the entertainment industry, I became a caregiver for 23 years for my father who had Alzheimer’s and my beloved brother who fell into a coma.
I became so entwined in the details of life that I no longer knew who I was, why I was here on earth or what happiness meant for me. I didn’t want to go on.
The answers are so tired of chasing after you as you frantically search for them in the details of life.
I discovered that we only use 5% of ourselves through our conscious minds according to Bruce Lipton. My true identity or as I call it, north star, lived in the rest of me, hidden in the 95% of the subconscious.
It contains the patterns of our direct and indirect experiences where we unknowingly play the director, actor, set designer, casting agent of our lives, demonstrating how powerful our true nature is.This realm is vast and wordless, using the language of feelings, metaphors, and symbols which our conscious mind complicates by trying to intellectualize it.
Imagine how much more we would experience in life if we bridged the 95% to the 5%?
After sifting through the nothingness, I found that my north star, my true identity is not joy but freedom. Not just for me but those around me.
I live like the stars in the sky never wondering, “Am I too bright? Too high in the sky? Take up too much room? Do I exist when the clouds occasionally cover me?”
My trajectory is true even when the details of life bring disappointment or darkness because I know no matter what, I live each moment as honestly and fully as the moment I answered the question, “Who am I?”
Your authenticity is the mirror that frees others.
When you embody your true identity, you:
- Don’t waste time thinking about yourself because you don’t need to – you’re always full of the best of yourself regardless of who’s around or what’s happening.
- Cleary see others at this level, too, even if they don’t, and give them space to do the best they can with what they have.
- You change the world everyday with your presence, not the one in Tibet, but your world, the one filled with the details of life.
How to Find Your True Identity
My clients safely revisit the past that’s playing out right in front of them in the present to bridge it to their dreams. We never embellish pain but see the past as neutral data points, like an editor, to decode the subconscious’ unspoken words.
Your power at this level moves circumstances to mutually benefit all without having to do anything different than show up.
- Translate any recent annoyance, at its deepest resonance where words can’t describe it, into a metaphor. This is an intrusion into your truth.
- Reverse that feeling until your heart skips a beat of unfamiliar knowing in your unique internal landscape, then give it form as a metaphor. This is your north star.
- Allow your north star to meet the intrusion and by its very nature, will thank it for giving you the gift of your true north.
Your true identity is simply you at 100%. Your mission and purpose in life is nothing more than living a true life from this place.
Joy Osaka-Lu is a life purpose coach, educator, and public speaker who helps people change what stresses them out into the best part of their lives. She is the founder of One Ripple, LLC, where one ripple can change everything®. Joy’s work provides practical self-transformation that is simple and fast to bridge the secrets of what people really, really want to a life of freedom that makes the world better. She teaches strategies that unwind the hidden roots of a true life. She can be reached at joy@oneripple.net and www.oneripple.net