Imagine that you’re meeting someone for the first time.
They say: “Tell me a little bit about yourself”.
How do you answer?
Most commonly, we start responding with “I’m a _____”. Lawyer. Teacher. Doctor. Engineer. This type of response is standardized in society, and today I stop to consider why we introduce ourselves in this way.
It comes down to 3 major things:
The narratives we have heavily bought into in society revolve around WORK.
We all feel like we’re in the “Day 2” of our lives; the messy middle.
Humans have a hard time bearing two truths about others, and even ourselves.
For society to function properly, there has to be a certain set of rules and social norms we all abide by. An ~agreed upon language~ as Jordan Peterson, clinical psychologist, refers to here. While I don’t agree with every stance Peterson takes, I do agree with the idea of an agreed upon language.
Language shapes how we think and act.
So, what does it say about our society if our agreed upon language is largely tied to productivity and profession? Of course, there is more to all of us than our jobs.
If we can agree this is true, then why do we introduce ourselves in the way we do?
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The narratives we have heavily bought into in society revolve around WORK.
For better or worse, good narratives ignite social change. Chuck Palahnuik — author of Fight Club — shares this perspective in an interview with Tim Ferris, and I concur.
Think about some of the narratives you consume through traditional media. Movies. TV shows. Advertisements. They produce social change towards a desire for wealth. This creates a mindset focused on what we have, not who we are, believing from a young age that success looks like a nice car, big house, lavish trips, etc.
Unless you’re a lucky duck and have a strong inheritence coming your way, when you graduate from college, the way to acquire this definition of success is by getting a job.
Tying your self-identification to said job is normal. It’s what is acceptable in society, because we all have agreed at some subconscious point in our lives to work towards these same goals. Stating such as one of the first things we share with a stranger is an indication of mutual understanding. It’s a signal: “I’m en route to success too”.
We all feel like we’re in the “Day 2” of our lives; the messy middle.
In her introductory episode of the Season 2 podcast, Unlocking Us, Brene Brown (my ultimate girl-crush) breaks down the ideas of Day 2 for us. It’s the ambiguous middle section of any experience that forces us to ask ourselves the real questions. The tough ones.
Here’s a fun example we can all relate to right now: a global pandemic.
In this example, Day 1 is the initial quarantine period. We’re saying things like “we’re all in this together” and “it’s the new normal”, while Day 3 would be a post-vaccine era.
Thus, Day 2 is right now. The time period between Day 1 and Day 3, existing in practical perpetuity. Questions include:
It’s the transitional period from beginning to end; we don’t know how long it lasts and our questions don’t have concrete answers.
Now, let’s broaden the aperture from the pandemic to life. For the purposes of our discussion today around introductions, consider the following assumptions:
If Day 1 is life until you graduate college and Day 3 is retirement, then Day 2 is the life we live in between. We ask ourselves questions like:
What do I actually want to do with my life?
What do I care about?
What do I care about more than I care about money?
For most of us, our responses to these types of questions are either too personal or nonexistent (yet). The truth is that even our work-in-progress answers to these questions is a closer semblance to a fuller picture of ourselves than our current professions, but it’s too messy to include in our response to “tell me a bit about yourself.” To say something like “I’m deeply passionate about education reform, but I’m an investment banker and haven’t fully connected the dots yet” is not a part of our agreed upon language. It leaves us too open and vulnerable, producing the “I’m a _____” answer instead.
Interesting consideration: When I share questions like this, some people believe that Day 2 is synonymous with your 20s. However, findings show that this type of self discovery and rediscovery occurs throughout our entire lives. We all think we’ve changed more in the last 10 years than we will in the next 10, but that’s simply not true. This phenomenon is called the “end of history illusion”, which Dan Gilbert — Harvard psychologist — explains in his TED talk.
Humans have a hard time bearing two truth about others, and even ourselves.
The final reason we limit our introductions to how we earn a living is this general struggle that the human brain has with holding two conflicting truths at once. This is an idea Malcolm Gladwell captures in his book, Talking to Strangers, where he uncovers the concept of transparency.
Transparency is the belief that what people say and how they act on the outside is reflective of how they feel on the inside. As you might imagine, this is not always the case, but believing that it is the case is a tool we use when meeting someone new to help us understand the other person.
If the idea that you can be X on the outside, but Y on the inside is tough to wrap our brains around for our own selves, how do we accept this conflicting reality in others?
With reflection, sure, both truths can exist. However, how we operate is fueled largely by our subconscious, and our subconscious does not create space for both realities as easily.
Many of us have conflicting parts of our identity, but sharing that with a stranger can present itself in a way that indicates you’re not genuine. That you haven’t made up your mind. It is not a part of our agreed upon language. So we introduce ourselves with the reality that is the simpler of the two: “I am a _____”.
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Now that we’ve addressed the “why” behind our job-title-introductions, I challenge you to challenge the modus operandi created by our agreed upon language. When we dive deeper into the vulnerabilities that make us all human, we open ourselves to learning more about each other, and ourselves.
Identity is a complex topic that I don’t expect to cover in a single post, but I figured I’d start with how we introduce ourselves. I’ll continue exploring how we define ourselves in future posts. For now, tell me a little bit about yourself. ;)
Shiv
Love the 3 insights you shared on how this open-ended question tends to generate such a formulated response, Shivani!
For many of us, it's also a reductive formula demonstrated to us by adults (i.e. people of authority) from an early age and reinforced long before we get to the messy middle. I remember being asked as early as second grade, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" It might've even been a homework question that I had to answer in essay form.
And regardless of when we first encountered this question, by the time career decisions become real and not just hypothetical we've all acquired the conditioning that the expected answer—the "correct" answer—is not along the lines of, "I want to be happy!" or, "I want to be a connector who brings the community together." People expect a profession, a neat box to put us into, and we're more than happy to oblige.
I completely agree that changing the language will change the narrative. To get different answers, it may help to shift the questions. In classes I facilitate, instead of asking attendees to take turns introducing themselves with that generic invitation (which almost always produces boring responses that are a combination of the person's name, job title, and tenure at the company), I get more engaging answers (and a more attentive audience) when I include specific prompts, such as, "What's a fun fact most people don't know about you?"
Great post! Thank you for sharing!
It’s becoming less acceptable to ask someone “what do you do?” - which begs a definitive, narrow answer. “Tell me about yourself” allows for flexibility but people don’t yet see the distinction between the two questions. We respond as if we were asked the former because we assume that's what the other persons mean. I would like to hear something like: “We’ll I’m an introvert but I enjoy meaningful conversations.” or “My life has been a tragic lately. But I’m ready to move onto the next chapter.”
But if we stop asking “What do you do” then the static responses will slowly dissolve.