Share with me your life story, and I will write it for you.
We don’t behave the same way with different people, whether intuitively or deliberately. We choose to show a different side of ourselves depending on the situation1. Nobody has met all of these sides other than yourself and perhaps you prefer it this way. Or maybe you’d like to break some stereotypes your loved ones have of you and help them see you in a new light while leaving them with a personal legacy to remember you by.
If you are experiencing an identity crisis, feeling confused by who you were, are and can be, I provide a non-judgmental ear, mirror back your thoughts to help clarify, and probe deeper where you contradict yourself. Judging you will make you defensive or withdrawn, neither of which states I’d want you to be in to extract the material for your story. However, being too obliging, even sycophantic (as chatbots are sometimes accused of), does you a disservice because we won’t be able to disrupt the usual thinking patterns that had contributed to the identity crisis in the first place.
This is not a vanity project. Treat it as a tribute to your past self, close those chapters that are holding you back and move forward. The chapters are still there to reread in the future – likely with a new lens – but they are not meant to be rewritten over and again. Because you don’t have to rewrite; you can always start a new chapter.
- Sounds like common sense, but this was groundbreaking at a time when behavior was largely believed to be driven by consistent personality traits. Walter Mischel (better known among the general populace for his work on the ‘toddler marshmallow test’ on delayed gratification) wrote about this in his 1968 book, Personality and Assessment. ↩︎
Vin-Writer 