Episode 868 · Oct 20, 2023

Why Your Identity Is Holding You Back and How to Change It

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Most people assume the biggest obstacles in their lives are external: the economy, bad luck, other people, or lack of opportunity. George Wright III, host of The Daily Mastermind, challenges that assumption head-on. In this solo episode, he makes the case that the single most powerful thing holding you back is something you built yourself: your identity.

This is part two of a three-part series on the factors that keep you from your best life. Yesterday George tackled fear. Today it is identity. Tomorrow: uncertainty. If any of those words make you uncomfortable, that reaction itself is worth examining.

What Jim Carrey's Transformation Reveals About Identity

To illustrate just how constructed our identities really are, George shares a series of interviews that actor Jim Carrey gave after playing comedian Andy Kaufman in the 1999 film *Man on the Moon*. Carrey's performance was widely praised as eerily accurate. But what struck George was not the acting achievement itself. It was what Carrey said it cost him psychologically.

Carrey described getting so deep into the character that he forgot who he was. When filming ended, he said he took a month just to remember his own beliefs and politics. And from that experience came a question that changed his perspective entirely:

"If I can put Jim Carrey aside for four months, who is Jim Carrey? Who in the hell is Jim Carrey?"

That question is not rhetorical. Carrey concluded that "Jim Carrey" was not a fixed self but a collection of ideas, backgrounds, and beliefs assembled over a lifetime. Irish, Scottish, French, Canadian, hockey player, religious person: all labels that were given to him or adopted along the way. An avatar, he called it. A Frankenstein monster of an identity.

Why Suffering Points Toward Freedom

In those same interviews, Carrey shared something that George finds deeply relevant to personal growth. After achieving everything he ever wanted and still feeling unhappy, Carrey arrived at an insight:

"Understanding suffering is the way to salvation because once you understand it, you have compassion, and the next thing you know, you're free."

George's point is not that you need to suffer. The point is that recognizing the limits of the identity you have built, and the discomfort that comes from living inside it, is itself the doorway out. The discomfort is telling you something.

The Three Levels of Identity

George draws on a framework from his mentor, Robert Stewart, to help make this practical. According to Stewart, identity operates on three levels:

Level 1: Background information. Your race, age, gender, where you grew up, your family. This is mostly fixed. You have limited control here.

Level 2: Beliefs shaped by experience. These are the meanings you have assigned to events in your life. "I am divorced." "I failed at that business." "I am not a creative person." These feel permanent, but they are not. You can change a belief by changing how you interpret the experience behind it.

Level 3: Conscious self-definition. This is where real change happens. It is the level at which you actively decide who you are and what you are becoming. George calls this the management level of identity. This is where you orchestrate the other two.

Most people live entirely at levels one and two, treating both as fixed facts. The shift George is inviting you to make is to move your operating point up to level three.

How to Create an Empowering Self-Definition

George is direct about what this looks like in practice. Stop letting your background or old beliefs define you. Stop mistaking the character you have been playing for your actual self. Instead, consciously author your identity.

"You are not your identity. Your identity is what you choose to make it."

Write a self-definition. Make it an affirmation if you need to. Describe the best version of yourself, the future version, in present-tense terms: who you are, what you do, what you believe, what you are creating in the world. Then use that definition as your operating identity, not the one you inherited.

This is not toxic positivity or wishful thinking. It is a deliberate act of identity management, grounded in the reality that your current identity was constructed too, just without your conscious participation.

Why Most People Never Question the Character They're Playing

The uncomfortable truth George highlights is that most people are exactly where Carrey was before his awakening: so wrapped up in the character they are playing that they have forgotten it is a character. You are not your job title, your past, your family role, or your failures. Those are things that happened to an identity. They are not you.

Carrey came to this through the extreme act of literally inhabiting someone else for four months. Most of us will not take that route. But you can arrive at the same insight through honest reflection: look at the character you are performing day to day and ask whether you consciously chose it, or whether it was handed to you.

Action Steps

Audit your current identity. Write down five to ten labels you routinely apply to yourself. For each one, ask: did I choose this, or was it given to me? Does it serve me?
Identify the beliefs underneath. For each label, trace it back to the experience or belief that created it. Recognize that the interpretation you placed on that experience is changeable.
Write your Level 3 self-definition. In two to four sentences, define who you are becoming: your values, your direction, your character in the life you are creating. Write it in the present tense.
Use it daily. Read it each morning. Let it function as an affirmation and a filter. Ask each day: am I acting in line with this definition or in line with the old one?
Dissect what no longer serves you. Find what serves you and what does not, and get rid of what does not.

Your identity is not a sentence handed down by the past. It is a work in progress, and you hold the pen. It is never too late to start living the life you were meant to live.

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

All right, welcome back to The Daily Mastermind, George Wright III with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. Today, we're going to talk a little bit about your identity. You know, I mentioned yesterday on the podcast that I feel like there's three primary factors. Now, there's a lot, but I think there's three primary factors that hold you back from your best life, that really hold you back from becoming the best version of yourself. And we talked yesterday about your fears and what you can do with your fears and recognizing them and getting past them. And today I want to talk to you about your identity. Tomorrow we'll talk a little bit about uncertainty, which is something a lot of people are struggling with, but I want to talk to you about your identity. And the reason I wanted to do this is because I believe, and you're probably somewhat aware of this, but I believe that most of us do not realize how significant it is that we're being held back by something that we created, our identity. Our identity is something not only that we've created throughout our life, like consciously, subconsciously, but it's something that really is not real. And I know what you're thinking, and I'm going to make a point here. I want to share a thought with you. I want to share a thought with you that came from Jim Carrey, the actor. Most of you know who Jim Carrey is. And Jim Carrey had an interview he did a little while back because he played, he was tapped to play the role of the late comedian Andy Kaufman in a movie called Man on the Moon in 1999. And it was an amazing performance, you know, Rotten Tomatoes gave it amazing, you know, eerily dead on, they said. And even, Even the movie critics all said it was amazing how Jim Carrey was able to play this role. And even Carrey agreed that he did a great job, but he agreed in kind of a more darker way, I guess you would say it. When he had an interview with The Tox in 2018, he said that role made him realize that he could lose himself in a character. And, you know, that got me going down a little bit of a rabbit hole. And I started digging in a bit. And I want you to indulge me for a minute because I want to share an interview he did after that movie where he sheds some light on things that I think will inspire you to really think about your identity. And then I'm going to give you a couple of strategies and we'll call it good for the day. So I'm going to kind of read the interview to you so you understand what's happening here. The interviewer said, Mr. Carey, have you ever had a spiritual epiphany? And he says, well, I've gone through a lot of changes in the last few years and a lot of realizations. And I guess you could say awakenings about things. Everything is touched by that. Everything I'm doing creatively right now seems to point to the awareness of a lack of self. He says, what are we? Why are we here? And the answer to both of these questions is nothing No reason as far as I concerned I just about playing with form And the interviewer said what do you think prompted these awakenings He says I guess just getting to the place he says where you have everything everybody ever desired and realizing that you're still unhappy and that you can be unhappy is a shock when you've accomplished everything you've ever dreamt of. He says, my gosh, it's not about this. And I wish for everyone to be able to accomplish those things so they can see that. And then he, quote unquote, he said, understanding suffering is the way to salvation because once you understand it, you have compassion and the next thing you know, you're free. And the interviewer said, is that what happened to you? He said, yeah, sure. It didn't happen to me though. There is no me, but it happened. And it pushed me towards the realization that there's no individual here. There are only energies. Now, a lot of people were kind of, you know, even lately, they kind of think, well, Jim Carrey is kind of out there, but I want you to really listen to what he's saying. The interviewer said, energies, what do you mean? And he said, yes, they're me. They're me talking to me, whatever they are, no matter how bad they are. I've gone through some really tough times in the last few years, and I would not wish them on anybody. But my God, my understanding of life and what is real and what is not real has expanded exponentially. because of those experiences. And my ability to understand suffering, which is a valuable thing, it's the way to salvation because once you understand it, you have that compassion. So what happened after that realization was essentially a very desperate and good energy of wanting to be loved and wanting to love and wanting to create and to be admired. And the interviewer says, there's a couple more thoughts I want to share with you here. He says, is it strange to look back on your films after having these revelations? it might be like seeing someone else entirely. And listen to me when I say what he said here. He said, I see someone who thought they were a person who was trying to create characters, but how can I put it? Playing Andy Kaufman, which I told you about before he lost himself in the role, he said, playing Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon, for example, I realized that I could lose myself in a character. I could live in a character. It was a choice. And when I finished that, I took a month to remember who I was. I couldn't remember what I believed, what my politics were. He got so deep. I'm digressing here. He got so deep in this character that he forgot who he was. He says, it took me a while and I was depressed going back to my own concerns and politics and things that I had before, but there was a shift that had already happened. He said, and the shift was this, and the shift was, wait a second, if I could put Jim Carrey aside for four months who is Jim Carrey Who in the hell is Jim Carrey And I want you to really listen to those couple of thoughts here The first is that he got so wrapped up in playing a character that he became the character And I think that's what a lot of you are doing right now. You're so wrapped up in who you think you are that you believe you're that identity that you've created, but you're not. Because you could create an identity that's something different. And if you can do that, if you can create an identity and believe you're that, why can't you do that a different way? And what does that really mean about who you are? And he says, well, what do you mean? And he says, well, if you talk scientifically, break it down to clusters of tetrahedrons, that somehow believe they're a thing, but they're ideas. They're just ideas. Jim Carrey was an idea my parents gave me. Irish, Scottish, French was an idea I was given. Canadian was an idea I was given. I had a hockey team and a religion and all the things that cobble together into this kind of Frankenstein monster of an identity. It's like an avatar. These are all the things I am. You are not an actor or a lawyer. No one is a lawyer. There are lawyers. Law is practiced, but no one is a lawyer. There is no one, in fact. He said, so nothing's real. And he says, you know, I think you pretty much play the part as best you can. But no, I don't think anything's real. And he went on to say, you know, I kind of, you know, there's some funny parts here. But this last part I thought was interesting. He says, so, do you think that Andy Kaufman, that the Andy Kaufman you became for the film found some sort of happiness in the end? He says, I think he was happy in the moment he was creating. No one can be happy with a career. The career is whatever it is. There are ups and downs. There are temporary things that happen, energies that happen. It's hard semantically to talk about where I am coming from sometimes because I'm extremely satisfied. Right now, the feeling is that there's great appreciation. There's great gratitude and excitement. This project happened organically. The footage was born out of playfulness and mischievousness. So in honoring that energy, there is definitely a satisfaction. But this is the point I want you to get from this interview. you. Actors can become other characters. In this case, he got so wrapped up in it, which I believe most of you do. Most of you are so wrapped up in the character that you're playing that you forget. It's just a character. It's just something you made up. Your identity is not something that is wired. I mean, it's wired neurologically, but it's not something that's permanent. You know, I want to, I want to, I want to remind you of an episode I did a while back on identity. When we were talking about my mentor, Robert Stewart used to talk about there are three very powerful levels of identity. And I know that there's a lot of things that make up identity but I believe they all fit into these three things Number one your background information you know where you from you know your race your age your gender your you know where you grew up the family you have That's your background information. That's level one. There's very little you can do about that. Some things you can do about that. Level two are your beliefs that shape your life. Your beliefs. And remember, these are just ideas you gave to events that happened in your life. I'm divorced. I'm a lawyer. I had this happen. I had that happen. Your beliefs, the beliefs that you have that come from your experience. But remember the philosophy and filter you put on that experience, because remember beliefs, the second level, you can change at any time. You can change your beliefs by changing the way you see an experience. But the third level is the one I want you to be conscious of. And the third level is your conscious self-definition of your identity. So you've got your background, you've got your beliefs, and you've got your conscious self-definition of your identity. This is the management level of your identity. This is where you orchestrate and arrange the other two levels. And I want you to listen to me when I say this. You are not your identity. Your identity is what you choose to make it. Your identity is made up of all these things, most of which you are giving meaning to, and most of which you're choosing to elevate. So what I encourage you to do in order to help you to stop holding back and start taking action and start living your life and creating your life and drilling and becoming the person that you want to be, is I want you to manage your identity with that third level, your conscious self-definition. Create an empowering self-definition. This is who I am and what I do and what I believe and what I'm creating in the world. Create that self-definition, use it as an affirmation, do whatever you need to do. But use that empowering self-definition. And some of us like to say, it's the future version of myself, the best version of myself. Well, use that as your empowering self-definition to define who you are right now. don't let your background don't let your beliefs and most importantly don't let this character you're playing become your identity because you have the power to create your identity to reshape your identity to rewrite your identity you've got to take control though and you've got to make that happen that's my message for today i hope you will take your identity and dissect it and find out what serves you and what doesn't serve you and get rid of that and so besides fears and identity tomorrow we're going to talk about some uncertainty, but I would love it if you would do me a favor and share this show, share this episode, help us get the word out on the podcast. I'd really appreciate it. It'd mean a lot to me. And I look forward to talking with you more tomorrow about uncertainty. And I hope you have an amazing day. Once again, my name is George Wright III, and this has been The Daily Mastermind.