Where Does Your Identity End?

Four monkeys sit in a room with a pole, and at the top of the pole hangs a bunch of bananas.

John Maxwell shared this study with me. One monkey climbs for a banana, and just as it reaches it, it gets sprayed with water; then, one at a time, the same thing happens to all four.

Then the researchers swap one monkey out for a new one that has never been sprayed. The new monkey heads for the bananas, and the other three pull it down before it can get hurt.

One by one, every monkey that ever got sprayed is replaced, until the room is full of monkeys that have never felt a drop of water. Not one of them will climb the pole.

Nobody in that room remembers the water. They only remember that climbing isn’t safe.

I know that room. I spent five years working for a corporation before I left to build my own business. The advice I heard most on my way out the door was some version of stay put, collect the paycheck, you won’t find anything like this out there.

There is safety within the confines of someone else's business.  Nobody saying it had ever climbed; they were pulling me down to keep me safe.

The harder part to admit is how long I had been pulling myself down. The title and the name on my business card answered a question I did not want to ask out loud: do I have value, and am I enough, without them? Can I do it on my own?

In The Things We Hide, I write about inactivity, one of the four walls leaders build out of their fears, and it rarely looks like standing still. It looks like loyalty, prudence, and a sensible plan to wait for the right time, when underneath it is a monkey at the bottom of the pole who has decided the bananas belong to someone else.

The belief holding that wall up was that my value came from the seat I sat in, so leaving the seat meant leaving my value behind. What it cost me was every year I spent guarding a title instead of finding out what I could actually build.

When I finally got pulled out of that room, I found what most people find once they climb: opportunities I never would have thought of from the floor.

Nobody told me they were up there, because nobody in the room had ever climbed.

Podcast

Dr. Esther Zeledon spent two decades in humanitarian aid, where one question she made up on the spot helped grow a $700,000 project into a $100 million one. She is the founder of Be.Act.Change, the award-winning author of Creating Your Limitless Life, and the creator of the $40 Billion Question framework. Last year her firm lost 90 percent of its contracts in a single week, and she spent the months that followed coaching people in 15 countries whose careers vanished just as fast.

Here are three takeaways from my conversation with Esther.

1. Your Value Never Lived in the Title

When a whole career vanishes in a week, Esther starts by separating the person from the position, knowing how “to position people’s value outside of their title and their identity.” 

Her clients learned to say, “I don’t have to be everything. I have these three things that I bring to the table,” so this week, write your three down without using your job title, your degree, or your company’s name.

2. Ask the $40 Billion Question

Esther invented it when a community handed her a canned PowerPoint: she had them close their laptops and asked what they would do with $40 billion to solve one global problem, because “how you solve this problem is how you solve all problems since you were seven.” 

Ask it of someone on your team this week, have them walk you through their first five steps, and listen for the pattern, because that pattern is the strength their title has been hiding.

3. Serving to Prove Is Still Proving

Esther gave 400 pro bono hours last year and still found herself asking, “When do you know it’s enough?” because service that runs on the question “do I have value?” never reaches a finish line. 

Before your next yes, ask whether you are serving the person in front of you or feeding the fear underneath, and let that answer set the boundary.

Climb the Pole

Every person Esther coached last year had a pole in front of them and a room full of voices telling them it wasn’t safe to climb.

Figuring out what you bring once the title comes off is the work I do with leaders one-on-one, and it starts with a single honest conversation. If you have been sitting at the bottom of the pole, let’s talk.

Start the conversation: tylerdickerhoof.com/contact

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