Move Beyond Your Past: We Are More Than the Sum of Our Experiences
Owning Who We Are and Who We Want to Become
There is a quote by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges that I love, and it resonates with me a lot. It says:
“I’m not sure that I exist actually. I am all the writers that I’ve read, all the people that I’ve met, all the women that I’ve loved, all the cities that I’ve visited, all my ancestors.”
(Note: Translation from El Pais, in an 1981 interview, entitled: Jorge Luis Borges: "No estoy seguro de que yo exista en realidad")
“No estoy seguro de que yo exista, en realidad. Soy todos los autores que he leído, toda la gente que he conocido, todas las mujeres que he amado. Todas las ciudades que he visitado, todos mis antepasados.”
—Jorge Luis Borges
Sometimes, we don’t realize just how much every person we’ve ever come across, every location we’ve visited, every situation we’ve been in, every culture we’ve ever experienced, and every tradition we ever inherited from our ancestors makes an impression on us — for good or for bad. We hold on to all that and label it ‘experience.’ All that history that we carry with us, we call it ‘what makes up who we are.’ And that is the mother of all beliefs that we hold.
The question is how much of that has been consciously chosen by you versus being assigned to you or inherited by you. And, more importantly, is it serving you, your growth, dreams, aspirations, and who you want to be?
The book Disciplined Dreaming by Josh Linkner has a beautiful story that illustrates my point. A teenage daughter is learning to make meatloaf, and her mother shows her the family recipe. But just before baking it, her mother explains that it is essential that she cut off one of the ends of the meatloaf. The daughter was surprised by this and asked why so. The mother responded that she didn’t have an answer other than that’s how her mother had done it. But now, she became curious about this odd step in the process, so they both called the grandmother to find out. The grandmother didn’t know either, other than to say that’s how her mother did it. The three now decided to call the great-grandmother to find out. And after hearing the question, the 98-year-old great-grandmother said, laughing out loud, “I have no idea why you do it! I used to do it because we didn’t have a big enough pan!”
“What you see is filtered through your beliefs. You rarely see ‘reality’. You see your version of it.”
—Joe Vitale
And that is how our beliefs are incorporated into our identities — we do things, we gather evidence, save it for future reference, and apply the knowledge in the future as a way to mitigate risk. And if it worked, it was even better because we got confirmation. And with this confirmation, we use this ‘knowledge’ as a way to predict the future. But we’re not the best at gathering solid, unbiased evidence. And somehow, this knowledge goes from evidence to ‘the truth.’ It is set; we take it for granted, and it becomes part of our identity and reality.
This is how we operate. We are human beings, and this is how we live by adopting beliefs. It is an essential part of weaving and maintaining our personal experiences, culture, and traditions. It is also healthy to understand the underlying reason as to why we do the things that we do and where this came from — hopefully, discarding the beliefs that no longer serve our goals as we go along. But how often do we clean up our mental and emotional garages of all the beliefs we’ve hoarded along the way?
We tend to forget that all these seemingly innocent beliefs affect our decisions or conclusions. Have you ever wondered why Monday is the best time to start a diet? Why do we wait for New Year’s to make resolutions? Why is it that if I don’t do it, it doesn’t get done? Why is it that there is never enough time? Why is it that no matter how hard I try, ‘they’ won’t appreciate what I do? Why do these things happen to me when I know I’m a good person? Why is it that I never have enough money for what I want to do? Why can’t I catch a break? Why is it that ‘someday’ is when I’ll finally get to enjoy my job/life/relationship? Why is it that I’ll truly be happy when I get that job, buy that car, have a bigger house, or find a partner?
How many of us have had these questions before? What are the presumably innocuous and pervasively disguised beliefs you carry that could hamper your goals? It could be as innocent as “Oh, I don’t dance,” or “I don’t sing.” But is any of that true, though?
“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t — you’re right.”
—Henry Ford
Indeed, it is true that the fabric of who we are is woven into ourselves one experience at a time. And it is also true that we incorporate beliefs from these experiences. Let’s not forget that while we do this, we often cut off the proverbial ‘ends of the meatloaf’ for no valid reason — not knowing that we can also find new recipes that work better for us.
Consider that many versions of ourselves haven’t happened yet, but somehow, we’ve cut them off from ever existing because it’s not even in the realm of possibilities of who we think we could be. In essence, those future versions of ourselves don’t and can’t even exist.
What are the versions of yourself that you wouldn’t even consider ever existing in the future? What versions of yourself do you don’t even bother exploring because you ‘already know’ what they look like?
“I am not what has happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
—Carl Jung
We are not only the sum of our experiences from our past. I want to think we are also the future versions of ourselves that stem from our choices today. I like to think that we are all those versions of ourselves that have not yet happened, all those possibilities of who we could be as well. Our experiences are one-half; there is also the future that we are stepping into that also makes up who we are.
Consciously owning who we are today and intentionally choosing the possibilities of who we want to become tomorrow while honoring, and quite possibly in spite of, what we’ve gone through in the past is also who we are.
________________________________________
Mariano is a growth and leadership coach for changemakers who promotes new ways of exploring perspectives and shifting the lenses we use to see the world. His coaching style leaves people with a sense of clarity and conviction from what is authentically true for them—resulting in being inspired and called into action by the new possibilities that arise.
If you are ready to explore more on this topic and how coaching can help you, please get in touch and set up a free consultation to discover how we can work together.
