Identity Alignment

Defining External Identity

This is how others view you, which is affected by things like social media and past conversations, either directly with you or about you. This type of identity is very volatile because not only are there so many eyes on you, which means there are so many potential differing views on you, but those views can be so easily changed by one or a few events. One moment someone may love you, then the next they may hate you.

Defining Internal Identity

This is how you view yourself. This type of identity is much less volatile and more steady than one’s external identity.

This is primarily because you cannot fake yourself out. You can’t successfully try to convince yourself that you are an x type of person when you are really something else because you know everything about yourself, so there is nowhere to hide.

Another reason is that there is only one set of eyes on yourself, and internal identity changes are almost never spontaneous. It takes a long time for you to change how you view yourself, so that means a few things.

It’s hard to change yourself, which can be seen as a bad thing, but that also means the change is that much more rewarding afterward.

Because internal identity changes are gradual, it is much more predictable than external identity changes. If you work/partake in one thing for an extended amount of time, you pretty much know 100% that it will change your internal identity, which cannot be said for external identity because no matter if you have worked on something for a very short or long period of time, other people’s views on you are something you cannot control or predict.

Alignment

Everyone only has a limited amount of energy that they can expend at one time, so one must be very careful about how they disperse it. Something that is often overlooked as an energy spender is having to uphold a certain image of yourself that isn’t truly you with “truly you,” meaning repeating beliefs that aren’t truly yours or portraying a certain title on yourself that you don’t truly identify with (e.g., climber, artist, musician).

By having to uphold this image in the fear of abandonment (whole side tangent that I'm not going to get into rn), we expend extra energy in maintaining two or more separate images.

In order to use as little energy as possible, we must try to shorten the gap between these two identities. It is impossible by definition to completely align the two because everyone's images of you are delayed, meaning they have a stagnant perception of you that becomes increasingly outdated as time passes, and unless someone is with you 24/7 and living inside your head (which is impossible), there will always be some type of delay present.

To shorten the gap, we must be aware of all the places where external identity can live. One obvious one is social media, which allows the immense potential for there to be more independent projections of one’s identity, giving way to more images to upkeep.

Another breeder of this identity gap is succumbing to societal pressure to say certain things that someone doesn’t truly believe in. This is often the case in political discussions and also in day-to-day conversations, which often feature the judgment of ideas and/or people.