Playing with identity

Our identity can seem like it’s one definite thing.

“I am a CEO.” “I am a parent.” Or “I am an introvert.”

Even if we acknowledge that we play multiple roles in different contexts, our identity can feel rigid nonetheless.

But as people move through Yellow sessions, something interesting seems to happen. People start entertaining a more varied and nuanced relationship with their sense of self. Their identity expands, becoming broader and more fluid. In the process, it allows new possibilities in work and life to open up.

There are several reasons for this, we think.

In every session, we are constantly inviting people to play and to try things on. Whether it’s a new behaviour, posture, or perspective, there’s an open invitation to try on new lenses, take them off, and to put them on again. There is no reward or punishment for success nor failure – because there is no success or failure. Instead, it’s all learning, and an opportunity to expand one’s range of experience.

As we’ve written about previously, we also encourage participants to leave their professional titles to one side in the first session at least. This opens them up to embody roles that aren’t limited to what their bosses, colleagues, employees, parents, children, or friends expect of them.

For two hours every two weeks, they are a little more free to be.

Like most of what unfolds in Yellow, this is nothing we had set out to accomplish or learn. Instead, it’s an emergent property of an ongoing invitation to play, experiment, and suspend judgement. 

You might be more than you tell yourself you are.