I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a question that feels more interesting and also far more accurate than simply “Who are you?”
And it’s: Who did you learn to become in order to cope?
I don’t think most of us consciously choose the version of ourselves we end being, some of the great parts yes perhaps, or is that an accident of just working really hard, but what about the stressed-out parts, the anxious parts, the I’m not always sure I’m good enough parts.
We adapt as we go from a pretty young age.
We notice what gets rewarded, what helps us feel safe, successful, liked, needed or in control, and then we tend to do more of it, like we found a hack or a rulebook for life to follow.
Maybe you became fiercely independent: the person who doesn’t need much from anyone else and can always work things out for themselves (I did this one). Maybe you became the fixer, the one who spots a problem, takes responsibility and gets it sorted, often before anyone else has even noticed there’s a problem.
Perhaps you became brilliant at reading a room. You notice the tiny shift in someone’s tone, a facial expression, or the thing that hasn’t been said. Or maybe you became the high achiever: the person who works harder, prepares more, double-checks everything and makes sure nobody could ever say you weren’t good enough, no one could laugh at you or make fun of you again (I know a few people who’d fall into this category).
You might be the person who can cope with an extraordinary amount of pressure. It’s normal for you to perform better under the pressure of a deadline, or without one, the thing doesn’t exist anyway except as an occasional nagging thought in the back of your mind that you really ought to x, y, z.
And here’s the fascinating thing that holds all of this together so powerfully, holds all of these “behaviours” in place for so many years: the fact that they probably worked, really well.
Some of those adaptations may even have become your greatest strengths.
Your independence, empathy, attention to detail, ability to perform under pressure, problem-solving, reliability or drive may have helped you build a career, a business, a family or a reputation.
So I’m not especially interested in looking back and deciding that all our coping strategies were bad. They weren’t. Many of them got us here.
“What got us here, won’t get us there”
What I’m more interested in is what happens when the thing that once helped us starts to exhaust us.
When independence turns into “I can’t ask for help.” Because I’ll look like I can’t cope and even more powerfully debilitating than that little voice, is the one that says, I’m just not someone who asks for help, that’s not who I am, ooh that’s a strong one that no self confidence workshop is going to break in 90 minutes!
When being conscientious becomes “I’ll just do it myself.”
When empathy means constantly monitoring everyone else’s emotional state.
When being brilliant in a crisis means we become so used to urgency that it’s hard to work without it.
When being capable means everyone assumes we’re fine, including us, often until we are literally in a heap on the floor, then we’re “allowed” to stop.
Did I ever tell you the story about a client who was watching Holby City and seeing the person lying in A&E waiting for tests, wished that was them, as then they could have a rest and no one would expect anything from them. They could legitimately not check their emails for a while. Ouch.
Maybe, at some point, the question stops being, “How can I get better at coping?” and becomes, “Do I still need to cope in this particular way?”
The truth is that many of us didn’t arrive in adulthood, at this point in our lives and careers being unable to function. In fact, the opposite was true: we had already found what worked for us.
We worked harder. We created systems, rules and internal processes. We relied on urgency and last-minute adrenaline. We learned to read the room, to look after everyone else, to be fiercely independent, and to reinvent ourselves when things weren’t working. Sometimes, we even became very successful while doing it – all.
I’ve started developing something around seven different “adaptation” patterns I’ve noticed in hard working, high achievers. These are not personality “types,” they’re not a diagnostic test, and they’re definitely not another way of putting people into boxes or giving them labels.
I’m interested in something much more human: who did we learn to become before we really understood our brains? Before we could look at what we do and how we do it and ask, “is this really the best way to go about it”?
And underneath it are questions that I think impact all of us:
- What did I learn to do?
- What was that strategy trying to give me?
- What has it given me?
- What is it costing me now?
- And, perhaps most importantly, what do I actually want to carry forward?
Because I don’t think sustainable change and creating the conditions for truly sustainable performance (at work and in life) means ripping away everything we’ve learned and starting again.
There may be parts of the person you learned to become that you genuinely like. Keep them. There may be strengths you developed precisely because life required you to adapt. Keep those too, maybe…
But perhaps, we can start putting down some of the things we no longer need to carry.
- We can be capable and still ask for help.
- We can be conscientious without carrying everything.
- We can be ambitious without permanently running on adrenaline.
- We can care deeply without feeling responsible for everybody.
- And we can be successful without constantly having to prove that we deserve to be here.
So that’s the question I’ll leave you with this week: who did you learn to become?
And perhaps the even more interesting question is: how much of that person do you still want to have to be?