by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
The Cultural Obsession With Identity May Be Keeping You From Your REAL Life
Have you ever felt like no matter how hard you try to “find yourself” you only end up feeling more lost?
Maybe you’ve chased your feelings, sculpted a quirky persona, dyed your hair purple, declared yourself a sapiosexual mystic-unicorn-entrepreneur and still – deep down – something feels…off.
If that’s you, don’t worry:
You’re not broken – you’re just confused about identity because you’re living your life in the Void instead of reality.
You ended up in this place because you bought into some of society’s most popular – but dangerous -false identity myths.
In this article, we’re going to debunk those myths, get real about what it means to be an actual real human being, and show you how to stop manufacturing an identity and start growing into your realness.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
False Identity Myths: What We Cover in This Article
- The Cultural Obsession With Identity May Be Keeping You From Your REAL Life
- False Identity Myth #1: “Just follow your feelings and you’ll find yourself”
- False Identity Myth #2: “To be worthy, you must be unique”
- Why These Identity Myths Are So Seductive
- What’s the Alternative? Grow Real, Don’t Pretend to Be Unique When You’re Not.
- The Danger of the “Special Snowflake” Trap
- So… Who Are You Really? What’s Your True Identity?
- 5 Practical Steps to Grow Real Instead of Faking a ‘Unique’ Identity
- Identity Myths Final Thoughts: You Don’t Need to Give Yourself a Self
False Identity Myth #1: “Just follow your feelings and you’ll find yourself”
Let’s start with the most famous darling of pop culture psychology – the idea here is that if you want to know who you really are, all you have to do is turn inward, locate some ‘feelings’, and voila…you’ve formed an instant identity for yourself.
Sounds lovely in principle but let’s be honest and face the fact that feelings are notoriously unstable, unpredictable, and fleeting.
One minute you want to travel the world and live out of a van; the next you’re looking at business ideas in your hometown that will finally allow you to express yourself whilst also making six figures….Which version of you is the ‘real’ one if both of these ideas conflict and keep changing?
The truth is, your feelings are constantly changing with no rhyme or reason and this – if you can even make sense of it – is heavily influenced by all sorts of factors (known and unknown) like sleep, stress, hormones, blood sugar levels, and – let’s not forget that ol’ chestnut – society.
That’s right, folks – a lot of what you feel is just a reflection of what your culture has trained you to value or fear:
If you were raised to believe that success = status = self-worth, for example, then of course you’ll feel inadequate when you’re not ticking those boxes…even if deep down you don’t actually believe in that particular system.
This doesn’t mean your feelings are meaningless – they’re important signals.
But signals aren’t stability and so if you try to build your identity on them, you’ll end up living in a psychological sandcastle.
In short, feelings are fragments, not foundations, and your REAL identity needs to be a foundation if you ever hope to have a real life.
False Identity Myth #2: “To be worthy, you must be unique”
Now let’s take a look at the second big myth – the one that fuels the modern obsession with specialness and being ‘unique’ (even though you’re one of 8 billion and counting):
From Instagram bios to TED Talks (if anybody still watches those), we’re constantly told that we must stand out, be different, and do whatever it takes to find our unique voice.
This sounds quite lovely and empowering but there’s a catch:
Trying to hard to be unique is not the same as becoming real.
Yes, every human being has unique experiences and your story is yours alone but in our rush to highlight how different we are, we’ve forgotten something crucial:
We’re often more alike than we are different.
No matter who or where you are, we all go through the same fundamental process of dancing between wholeness and fragmentation (and then back again if we’re lucky or do the work):
We’re born whole, life happens and we fragment, and then we spend the rest of our journey trying to stitch ourselves back together. Along the way, we wrestle with the same human truths – mortality, change, love, shame, grief, connection, disconnection, and the tug-of-war between ego and shadow in the form of the Shadow Dance.
To deny this shared reality in the name of individuality and being ‘unique’ – for the sake of the ego and its need to distance itself from the truth – is to isolate yourself which means that, paradoxically, the more you focus on being different, the more lost and disconnected you become.
Uniqueness just becomes a costume with an identity crisis hiding under beneath it as you become more and more detached from who you are in your realness.
Why These Identity Myths Are So Seductive
So the question arises about why we fall for these false identity myths in the first place.
The answer is pretty simple:
Because they promise ease.
They tell us that we don’t need to do the hard work of confronting our own emotional debris, facing uncomfortable truths, or accepting our shared humanity.
Instead, they give us something shiny to chase in place of all this: instant validation, curated aesthetics to suit whatever mask we think we’re wearing, and ego boosts to keep the game going.
Maybe in the short-term this can give us the illusion that our needs are being met but the price of avoiding the real work is always more than we’re willing to pay long-term and you just get stuck in a loop of performance, perfectionism, and personal confusion.
The end result of all this that your so-called ‘identity’ becomes a role that you’re playing – not a truth that you’re living.
What’s the Alternative? Grow Real, Don’t Pretend to Be Unique When You’re Not.
The solution isn’t to suppress your feelings or erase your individuality but to root your identity in reality over performance.
This is where it brings us back to realness (as everything on this site does, because, by its very nature, realness is grounded in wholeness.
In short, to be real is to work with the truth of what it means to be human (no matter how ‘unique’ you are).
This includes things like:
- Accepting that everything is always changing because reality as we experience it is always in flux.
- Knowing that death, suffering, and uncertainty are part of the deal no matter who you are or how much you’d like things to be different.
- Embracing the fact that we are interdependent and connected, not isolated islands that are independent and separated from one another.
- Acknowledging that the ego and the shadow are always dancing and that you need to go deep into this dance to heal yourself.
- Recognising that our pain isn’t just personal – it’s collective because everybody is born onto the same playing field and the ‘rules’ are the same for everybody.
When you do this, you stop trying to be someone you’re not and start trying to become someone real; you stop pretending to be special and start becoming whole.
This isn’t always glamorous and it definitely doesn’t always look good on social media but it is liberating and it will help you to live the life that you want to be living: YOUR OWN.
The Danger of the “Special Snowflake” Trap
A paradox about living this human life we’re all living is that the more you try to construct an identity around how unique you are, the more disconnected you become from reality and from yourself.
Why?
Because real life doesn’t ‘care’ about your quirks and idiosyncrasies – it only responds to your presence.
Trying to be unique often becomes a way to avoid the humility that comes with being real because realness means facing your limitations, your shadow, your messiness and also your quiet power, humanity, and shared experience.
When you stop chasing uniqueness as a goal and instead focus on becoming true, something amazing happens: you become authentically distinct and stand out in a real way – not because you’re trying to achieve this but because realness can’t be replicated.
So… Who Are You Really? What’s Your True Identity?
Here’s the hard truth most self-help books won’t tell you (except mine, of course!):
You are not an identity; you are a process.
You are not a ‘fixed’ and static thing but a living, breathing, unfolding dance between awareness, acceptance, and action; you are the relationship between your ego and your shadow, between your past wounds, your present experience, and your future potential.
To “find yourself”, then, is not a one-time event. It’s not like you just ‘choose’ something off a supermarket shelf and then that’s it – it’s yours until you’re done with it. Instead, it’s a lifelong journey of unpeeling the layers of falsehood and illusion and returning to what is real in each moment.
It’s the constant process of moving from FRAGMENTATION to WHOLENESS.
Check out my book Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace if you want to go deep into the process of moving towards wholeness and growing real.
5 Practical Steps to Grow Real Instead of Faking a ‘Unique’ Identity
Let’s make this real with some practical next steps you can try out now:
1. Audit Your Identity Statements
Write down any “I am” statements you use regularly – for example, “I’m just not a morning person” or “I’m an anxious introvert” or “I’m the kind of guy who…”.
Now ask yourself a few questions about how real or unreal this way of identifying might be:
- Are these based on your current emotional habits or real truths?
- Are they limiting you or helping you grow?
- Do they reflect wholeness or fragmentation?
Challenge any identity that feels like a performance or a fixed habit rather than a process.
2. Observe Your Feelings Without Worshipping Them
Start noticing your feelings without letting them drive your decisions or define who you are.
Say to yourself:
“This is something I’m feeling, not something I am”.
(For example, anger is something that you HAVE, not something that you ARE).
This simple reframe can change everything because it allows you to create space between you and the shifting sand of your emotions.
That space is where the real you can make choices based on your real values and principles rather than just how you feel or how society (etc) told you you should act.
3. Connect with the Shared Human Story
Make a list of five deep human truths that apply to everyone – including you.
Some examples:
- I will die someday
- I need other people
- I experience both joy and pain
- I have an ego and a shadow
- I want to love and be loved
Reflect on these often because they’re the type of universal truths that make you a real human being:
They connect you to the real fabric of humanity, which is far more nourishing than any temporary label that’s destined to go out of date.
(These kind of truths apply to literally every human being that’s ever lived, is alive now, or who will ever live in the future – that’s how you know it’s REAL).
4. Replace Performance with Presence
The next time you’re tempted to stand out for the sake of it or to prove your specialness, pause and ask yourself:
- “Am I doing this to express truth or to chase a feeling of worth?”
- “What’s the realest thing I could do right now?”
Often, the realest thing is the most humble one.
Presence always trumps persona because when you’re present you have to be connected to reality (because reality is always found in the present moment).
5. Choose Growth Over Image
Create a short “Realness Code” for yourself – just 3-5 simple but effective principles that guide how you want to show up.
It doesn’t have to be complicated – for example:
- I will prioritise truth over comfort
- I will seek wholeness over uniqueness
- I will choose humility over performance
- I will stay connected to what’s real, even when it’s hard
This becomes your true north – not a fixed identity, but a living orientation for moving forward in life.
Identity Myths Final Thoughts: You Don’t Need to Give Yourself a Self
Here’s the ‘good’ news:
You don’t need to invent an identity to be worthy.
You don’t need to “find yourself” by digging through your emotions or picking an aesthetic and you don’t need to be a special snowflake.
You just need to be real.
Every time you choose truth over illusion, presence over performance, or humility over ego, you move a little closer to wholeness and have a more solid foundation on which to build your life (so it can be real over unreal).
And in that wholeness, you won’t need to prove your ‘uniqueness’ – you’ll just be living it.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re ready to grow into your real identity so you can start living your real life then book a free coaching session with me now and I’ll guide you into taking real action and keep you accountable on the way there.
Trust: A Manual for Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace is a book about learning to return to your realness by cultivating trust in yourself and trust in life.
It contains practical exercises and dedicated meditations (Transformational Bridges) to take you DEEP in knowing yourself and life.
This book will answer many of the questions you have growing REAL and flowing towards wholeness. It covers everything from shame to addiction to the unconscious mind and synchronicity (and way more).
Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness is a book designed to help you look at your life from the inside-out so that you can stop holding yourself back and go get what you really want.
It contains 166 practical ‘Revolutions’ for awareness and over 8,000 Self-Guidance Questions for you to uncover new insight about yourself, the world, and reality that you can translate into action and start building your real life on the realest possible foundation.
Shadow Life is an exploration of the human shadow and the hidden side of our personalities. It looks at the masks we wear, where these masks come from, and how we can take them off.
The book explores how we can better manage our relationships with shame, guilt, and trauma in order to remove the Mask that the world has asked us to wear (and that we forgot we were wearing) so we can live an authentic life with less drama, chaos, or BS whilst we’re still around.
The Flow Builder Journal has everything you need to make the next 21-weeks of your life a turning point.
It has monthly, weekly, and daily (morning and evening) check-ins, tools and reflections to keep you in the zone and keep you flowing with zest and momentum.
If you want to get unstuck and grow REAL then check it out.
Download EGO/SHADOW/TRUST - a free guide to transformation that will walk you through the vital stages of Awareness, Acceptance, and Action with practical strategies to implement right away.
Join the 7-Day Bare Ass Minimum (BAM) Challenge and start to implement foundational health habits and a powerful life vision only a week from now.
