Several weeks back, I made the declaration that the more labels a person adopts, the harder it becomes to be a person and know who you are. Multiple labels saddle a person with mental struggles that become physically exhausting. Each label comes with social responsibilities, cultures, and expectations that cannot be shirked as long as a person has adopted that label.
For example, I am a dual-service disabled veteran. Thus, I carry the cultures, expectations, and responsibilities of sailors and soldiers. Consider what the expectations of a soldier are, and that image is part of the identity and societal responsibilities for being a veteran soldier. Being disabled carries societal expectations, both mental and physical burdens. Consider the Marines, and every Marine is a Marine for life! You graduate basic training and earn the title Marine, and you will ALWAYS be a Marine! Again, that title and label hold societal expectations voluntarily onboarded, and never will a Marine lose the attitude and social expectations of Marines.
The same is true of every single label a person voluntarily chooses for themselves. The label will attract specific people into your social circles, but only as long as you willingly live the life expectations of that label. Each label selected will form identities and mental challenges to meet the social expectations, a heavy burden indeed!
In a recent Tik Tok video, a person proudly declares more than 50-labels, preferred adjectives and pronouns, and identities. The video lasted more than 3 minutes, and I felt sorry for the exertion this person will face every minute they have these identities onboarded. Another person watching this video declared that the subject claiming their labels was mentally ill; I agree with that sentiment. Why; because the subject will never know who they are because of the noise of the labels, which includes the social pressures, the responsibilities, and the expectations. I do not know the name of the person in the video, I would not share that video due to the privacy respect I have for others.
Who are you?
Even though current society in 2021 declares confusion between who and what a person chooses to be, not what are you. For example, I do not like, nor do I onboard, the identity of disabled. I am NOT disabled, handicapped, injured, and working on healing, but NOT disabled. Consider the power of words for a moment.
The transitive verb “dis” means to show disrespect, insult, or criticize. As a prefix, “dis” is defined as the opposite of something, depriving someone of something, excluding someone, or expelling someone. Thus, a disabled person is either being disrespected, insulted, or criticized, deprived, excluded, expelled, or is the opposite of able. Frankly, when we are made aware of the etymology of words, we are then more aware of why people choose to adopt or not adopt certain words and labels. Do we understand this problem of labels just from an etymological perspective?
Regardless of plasticization, words hold power over the mind. Words become identities, thoughts become things, and research supports that labels hurt mental processes and can permanently scar. Yet, who and what a person chooses as their identities are not considered a problem in current society or a mental illness. People’s choices reflect their identities to attract those in socially accepted circles.
Thus, who are you? Who do you choose to be? Are those identities sufficient? While not as important as who a person is, the last question ranks a close second. How many identities can you physically onboard and live successfully? As a fan of simplicity and a follower of the KISS rules, as detailed by Murphy, the god of perversity, I keep it supremely simple to protect my energy levels and allow my identity to shine through. Having only a few identities enables me to select social commitments, restrict the mental noise and exertions, and hold myself accountable to a few identities to grow as a person.
Returning to the Tik Tok video subject and their 50+ labels, identities, and preferred pronouns, we must ask, what is sufficient? A follow-on video by this person reflected the physical exertions from conforming to identities and social pressures. Worse, this person had onboarded several more labels and identities. They reflected the mental illness and physical drain caused by trying to live up to all the label responsibilities. An extreme example; unfortunately, no; the pressures to onboard labels and identities have grown exponentially, mental problems are too significant to quantify, and they are growing.
Not just in America, the confusion about who a person is, the identities, and their inherent loads, have become a global phenomenon. What are the mental health professionals doing; causing harm by not discussing the physical and mental exertions of onboarding too many identities. It is up to the individual and parents of minor children to understand and help learn and teach simplicity in labels allows growth as a person, not more identities, but less. Fewer identities provide freedom for growth, identity exploration and empower mental health, leading to improved physical health.
Identities
As a pre-teen, I struggled with the concept of my identity. Religion was a curse, my family was worse, and I did not know who I was, thus strangling what I could do or become. I got jealous of how my sister could get away with breaking the rules and thought I should be a girl. I struggled with wanting to be a girl for several years as I learned who I was and what I wanted to be. If this problem occurred right now, professionals would counsel me to adapt and change my body through drugs and surgery, compounding my identity problems. Yet, what helped, was getting to know me!
I had several people help me form an identity I could be comfortable living with as I explored my options, fought to understand my role and purpose, and embraced my potential. It took time, lots of time. It required patience with myself, a moral code I could live in, and a desire to learn—all of which I had to develop from scratch. My identity is forged in the fires of adversity, for the consequences of my choices during this time played a role in how I went to school, what I chose to learn, and where I found employment and socially accepted company. Some of those consequences hang around even all these many years later. Some consequences I have been able to live long enough to survive.
Worse, as I have learned more about myself, my identity has changed, bringing with it consequences of change. Music, movies, humor, education, and more are part of an identity that forms a life. Choices bring consequences; how we value those consequences (e.g., good/bad, profitable/unprofitable, etc.) will determine our eventual destiny towards understanding who we are, so we can become what we desire to see in the mirror. More lessons I had to learn, then and only then, could the value of religion be discovered, the value of family understood, and honor and pride and commitment to self appreciated as an identity to live. Crucial to this growth and development, I know when to cut social ties, drop music and movies into the trash, and I am imperfect in changing, but I have some lessons I would see others learn to avoid pitfalls.
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- Commit to learning using the question, “Who am I?” as a core principle to discovery.
- Allow yourself time to think, ponder, and consider before committing to an identity. I always wanted to be a soldier, but I loved the ocean. I did not understand the value of these paradoxical options, and by rushing headlong, I had to learn an identity after living that identity. Arduous path; know first, then adopt an identity. Let me try and simplify that with my favorite axiom, learned as an Emergency Medical Technician, “Never take your body where your mind has not traveled first!”
- Comfort is key. If you are not comfortable, your conscience tells you something is wrong. An identity should require physical strain and mental confusion. Yes, you can delude yourself for a time/ Ultimately, your conscience, spirit, intellect, whatever you call your inner voice, will break through and tell you your identity is not mentally acceptable. If your identity choice is not comfortable, it will affect your physical health negatively.
- Never stop learning; learning leads to change, and change is good!
- When in doubt, turn to lesson two, give yourself more time before committing to an identity.
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I love hard rock, big hair bands, and southern rock. Steel guitars, banging drums, and headbanging to an excellent beat are an identity with power. But headbanging gives me incredible headaches. Too much rock and roll, and I cannot think clearly, and the ability to control my thinking is paramount to me. Do I adopt the headbanging identity or not; sometimes, I am all in for a solid rock fest. Mostly, I listen to the inner voices and moderate my music. See, lesson two continues to hold power and lesson four keeps me thinking how much longer will I affect my identity with an uncomfortable identity with physical pain.
Choose carefully, evaluate often, and allow yourself the freedom to grow by not onboarding labels without due consideration. Please, consider your gender and biological sex as integral to your ultimate destiny and comfort. Before you are comfortable in your skin, you have to be comfortable in your mind! If you want to explore identities, explore, but explore smartly and be cognizant of the social responsibilities, expectations, and cultures inherent with an identity. Observe those with those identities closely for the consequences of thier identity.
I cannot betray a confidence, but I have witnessed how traumatic experiences can be the impetus for forcing an identity change. A close associate went to a party, had a mickey slipped into their drink, and woke to a new reality. The consequences of other people’s identities can negatively impact your identity, especially if you do not know who you are!
I have never been comfortable with the hard rock, headbanging social aspects of rock and roll identities. The illicit drug use, the promiscuous sexual encounters, and the extremes in living frankly scare the hell out of me! But, I love the music, and I love much of the wardrobes in this identity, even though I will NOT wear makeup and cannot play a musical instrument.
Life is a journey; travel safely using the axiom, “Never take your body, or anyone else, anywhere your mind has not already traveled.” Think, ponder, consider, and then act confidently.
© Copyright 2021 – M. Dave Salisbury
The author holds no claims for the art used herein, the pictures were obtained in the public domain, and the intellectual property belongs to those who created the images. Quoted materials remain the property of the original author.
While walking through Home Depot, my favorite aisles are those aisles with tools, power tools, hand tools, and so forth. My mind always goes on imaginative wanderings, thinking about what those tools will go out into the world and do. Will an inexperienced hand learn on those tools? Will they build grand buildings? Will they destroy? What will those tools help accomplish? The potential held in a tool is as much a mystery as looking at a babe in arms and thinking, what will that soul go forward and do? I never become bored thinking about the potential held in a tool as part of the ongoing saga of humanity.
But, this article is about people’s potential; why begin discussing tools? To a leader, each person is a tool requiring training, delegation, trust, and motivation to achieve the measure of their creation. Have you ever witnessed an unskilled manager use, or abuse, their people? My first officer in the US Army National Guard was one of these unskilled managers. The stories and experiences from this manager are legion, fraught with examples of what not to do and the hubris of a person placed into a position of power above their competence level. I have long wondered, what did this officer’s boss think about this officer’s performance?
As I was coming into manhood, a clothing brand began and was almost instantly popular; the brand is easily recognizable and states two words, “No Fear!” Launched in 1989 by twin brothers Mark and Brian Simo, No Fear quickly became one of the most popular sportswear companies globally—and the most popular sportswear company staunchly against being scared. I will not claim I have “No Fear,” but I choose to live without fear. When fears arise, my answer is to learn all I can, mentally prepare for times when those fears will rise again, and then move forward living like those fears will not repeat, for I am mentally prepared.
Case in point, I was on a destroyer in the US Navy. I had been on the ship for more than two years; I was in charge of Repair 5, the Engine Room damage control locker, and in the middle of the 0000–0400-watch, the bells and alarms go off, “Major Fuel Oil Spill in Main 1.” Because I had practiced, I had personally trained my fire team. I was exceedingly knowledgeable about the space, the equipment, and the watchstanders; I proceeded into an actual casualty with confidence, not fear. More, my team could trust the training I had given them, and they moved from sleep to firefighting with confidence. While no fire erupted that night, the casualty was quickly contained by the watchstanders. My fire team was prepared to assist; the experience looked upon is not one of embarrassment from fear but confidence and appreciation for preparation, drills, and knowledge.
My first time going through the CS Gas Chamber happened with my National Guard unit. I was scared, not fearful, just frightened. I had no confidence in the equipment, I had not been to basic training yet, and here I was going into a gas chamber. This experience provided me with confidence that my fellow soldiers in basic training did not have as we went into the gas chamber in basic training when I experienced the gas chamber in the US Army Basic Training, Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. I had no fear, no trepidation, and no reason to doubt.
You possess beliefs, and some might even be firmly held beliefs; this is great. I am not writing to dissuade you from your beliefs, to decide differently, or even to emote in a manner foreign to you. My intent is to aid you in introspection, a path of self-knowledge where you know why you know, why you believe, and why you act as you do. Do you know why; in knowing why you begin to understand, and understanding brings knowledge and acceptance.
Do you know why? Are you willing to investigate to know why? What will you choose to do when the why is revealed? Knowing why requires mental preparation, mental preparation requires mental strength, agility, and flexibility, all skills that require practice, time, and development through experiences willingly sought. Therein lay the most challenging part of building mental skills, being willing to seek out these opportunities, and remaining fixed upon learning, no matter the cost.
As stated and repeated only for emphasis, you may choose how you will, believe, feel, and act the way you think is best for you and yours. My aim and intent are not to dissuade but to help you more fully appreciate the why and lose the fear. As a teenager, a friend of mine, a shepherd, asked me to help him on the ranch. My first day coincided with shearing day, and with 400-head of sheep to shear, this was not going to be an easy day. Herding the sheep into the corral was not difficult and was accomplished without incident. Getting the sheep into the run and into the trailer to be sheared was incredibly difficult, but getting the sheep out of the shearing van was easier than falling off the porch. Why; because of fear. The sheep wanted to be sheared, but the confinement of the run and the noise the shears produced increased fear so much that the animals could hardly think straight, and they became more fearful the closer they got to the van where the shearing stations were. Animals confined in tight quarters in the run turned themselves about and tried to flee backward in the run. Fear made them do incredible things I had never imagined an animal could do.
As I experienced life, surviving the US Army and the US Navy, I learned what fear does to humans; worse, the consequences of fear leave an indelible impression upon the minds of those who chose to succumb to fear. The movies never show this side of fear; books and magazines never discuss the aspects of what fear does to harm the mind and body of the person involved. Worse, society has come up with terms and names to soften the repercussions of a moment’s fear. As a kid, I watched a lot of M*A*S*H 4077; in one of those shows, Sigmund, the psychiatrist, talks about how a moment’s fear on the battlefield becomes a lifetime of regret, shame, and the potential of an eternal soul is lost. All because, for one moment, fear overcame, and the body responded, while the mind lost control.
Do you know why? Are you willing to discover the why and teach others what you have learned? The final step in introspection is not acceptance but being willing to teach. Through teaching, you learn more perfectly; this is a pattern that I have seen replicated in too many classrooms to ignore. I met an amazing woman in a long-term care facility in Geneva, Ohio. She was my mothers-in-law’s roommate. She was a teacher and began her career in a one-room schoolhouse at sixteen. She retired just after the school’s consolidated. She had been blind for a long time. I never met a more grateful person, and I have not met a more learned person! She said every day she taught, she learned something new, which taught her to be grateful, and in gratitude, she taught and learned for her entire career and every day thereafter.
According to several online sources, the definition of employee engagement is, “Employee engagement is a fundamental concept in the effort to understand and describe, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the nature of the relationship between an organization and its employees.” If you believe this definition, you will miss the forest for the bark you are fixated upon! Employee engagement is fundamental; it is not a concept, a theory, or a buzzword. Employee engagement is a relationship between organizational leaders and the employees, but employee engagement is not about collecting qualitative or quantitative data for decision-making policy-based relationship guidance. At the most basic level, employee engagement is the impetus an employee chooses to onboard because of the motivational actions of the manager they report to.
Inactive and selective listening can be heard through phone lines, instant messaging, text messaging, and easily observed during face-to-face communication. Worse, active listening launches trust, and when faked, destroys credibility, ruining relationships. Reflective listening can only achieve mutual understanding when both parties are choosing to listen intently and with the purpose of reaching mutual understanding. The most powerful tool in an organizational leader’s toolbox for quickly rectifying employee engagement is reflectively listening.
Follow the instructions on a shampoo bottle, “Wash, Rinse, Repeat.” The appreciative inquiry model can be scaled, repeated, implemented into small or large teams, and produce motivated members who become the force to create change. Allow yourself and your team to learn, this takes time, but through building motivation for excellence, time can be captured to perform.
Employee engagement requires structural changes to the organizational design. Employee engagement is going to bring immediate change to the organization. If the leaders, directors, managers, supervisors, team leaders, etc., are not prepared for and willing to change, employee engagement will die as an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. As a business consultant, I have witnessed the death of employee engagement, and the death is long, protracted, and disastrous to the entire business. Worse, individuals refusing to change stand out like red dots on a white cloth as employee engagement dies.
The second step in employee engagement is training the organization to accept change and failure as tools for learning, growing, and developing. A toddler learning to walk will fall more than they stay up before they can run. The same is true when initiating employee engagement. Guess what; you are going to fail; can you as an organizational leader accept failing? Are you willing to admit you failed, made a mistake, and publicly acknowledge the blame and consequences? Are you willing to allow others to accept the praise for doing the right thing? Will you as an organizational leader accept change? How you answer these questions also speaks volumes to the employees you are trying to engage. Depending upon how you individually and collectively as a team answer these leadership questions will decide if you fall back to step one or advance to step three.
Engaging with employees should be fun, it should be an enjoyable experience, and it should bring out the best in you! All because you want to see others engage, grow professionally, learn, develop, and become. Your efforts to teach engagement lead you to learn how to engage better. Seize these learning opportunities, choose to grow, but never forget to have fun. My best tool for engaging with employees, dad jokes! Really, really, really, bad dad jokes! For example, when Forrest Gump came to Amazon, what was his computer password?
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