Understanding How Our Mindset and Identity Respond During Change
What we call our personality is in fact a verb. It is the summary of our thinking and our behaviours – it is less who we are and more what we ‘do’. Our personality emerges from the different strategies that we use to navigate the world.
Based on our past experiences we create ‘happy when’ strategies which guide us through life in pursuit of happiness and success.
The “happy when” strategy is a pattern we developed based on the belief that happiness lies in some future achievement or in someone else’s opinion. We tell ourselves, “I’ll be happy when I achieve success,” or “I’ll be happy when I meet others’ expectations.” These strategies are healthy and helpful in so much as they give us a direction of travel.
In many ways, these strategies work—they motivate us to seek out opportunities and solutions. They provide consistency, giving our personality a framework to operate within, a methodology for what we need to do to survive and thrive in familiar environments.
Yet, these strategies also limit us. They keep us playing the same role, keep us looking for the same problems to solve, keep us pushing the same rock up the same hill.
The Origins of Our “Happy When” Strategies
To break free from the traps that lie within the ‘happy when’ strategies we must first understand their origin. They are our very own intelligent survival strategy. The rules we learned to play by to keep us safe.
Under threat, certain strategies make sense. In the face of adversity, we might adopt a fight or flight response – attempting to appear stronger or more capable than we are – the ‘need to prove’ strategy. Happy when we have proved our worth. Alternatively, we might adopt a freeze or fawn response – playing smaller than we are, avoiding conflict by appeasing those around us – the ‘need to please’ strategy. Happy when we have made others happy.
Our personality will be made up of these strategies, each simple in isolation, but infinitely complex in combination.
The strategies themselves are not the problem. Knowing when to prove or when to please are a healthy and helpful way to manage relationships. The challenge arises when we become too identified with a particular strategy, conditioned to believe that it is the best or only way for us to operate. During a period of transformation we may struggle if our personality is dominated by a strategy that prevents us from accessing a more effective alternative.
When navigating change, we can often find that the habitual do-ing of our personality is no longer the same route to happiness or success. True transformation, as opposed to relocation, requires us to explore and unpack these strategies, expose their limitations and falsehoods.
The Shadow of “Happy When”
Behind the ‘happy when’ strategy is often the feeling ‘not happy now’. Our motivation is often correlated to the level of dissatisfaction or suffering we feel – the more we suffer the more we are driven to overcome it. This mindset is rooted in the fear that we are not enough as we are. Beneath the ‘happy when’ strategy there maybe beliefs such as “I’m only loveable when …” or “I’m only safe when ….”
The strategies are often formed by the need for acceptance in our childhood. Most of us grew up in an environment where love was subtly or significantly conditional – loveable when we were quiet, beautiful, clever, strong, good little boys and girls. We all learned to adapt to the environment and play by the particular rules of our household. Those adaptations in time became our conditioning, and after refining and perfecting those strategies at home and at school, those strategies became our identity – our personality, what we do to survive and thrive.
Our Personality as a Mask
The do-ing of our personality is very often the mask we wear to protect the vulnerability of our be-ing. These strategies help us avoid the shame of feeling that we are not enough, a way to avoid the fear of rejection or abandonment if we are less than what is expected of us.
Our motivation comes from this need to prove our worth or please others, our deepest fears driving our behaviours. Yet we long to be accepted and loved for who we are beneath the mask. Loved and accepted in our vulnerabilities as much as we are recognised in our strengths.
This is the deeper work we encounter during significant change. We are forced to examine these old strategies and step into the discomfort of unpacking the stories we have told ourselves for many years.
In these moments it may feel like an existential crisis – our core narrative and belief system is being challenged. We ask ourselves ‘who am I without this strategy’. Breaking the patterns of our personality makes us question, ‘how can I be safe without this strategy?’.
The personality, created to protect us, doesn’t want to let go. It has been doing its job for many years. Removing the mask of our personality and releasing the strategy can be frightening. For good reasons, we resist stepping into that discomfort. For good reasons, we want to avoid revisiting our deepest fears.
Moving Beyond Fear
Yet, if we don’t do that work, if we don’t explore the root cause we are destined to repeat the same patterns. It is better to explore the fear and shame at the root of our strategy than continue to let it stay in the background directing our personality.
We always have the choice, be the chameleon and attempt just to change the mask, or, like the caterpillar, be willing to let go of the past and become the butterfly.
The good news is this work doesn’t require us to stop using our strengths, it doesn’t mean that we lose our edge. What we gain through transformation is a choice. We gain the ability to move beyond our reactive strategies and choose our response. Do we do what we’ve always done, like Pavlov’s dogs salivating each time the bell is rung, or do we choose what to do next? Or do we find the moment to pause, break the pattern and choose an alternative response? In that moment we gain the choice – play to our old strengths or develop new ones. Stay behind the mask or begin to discover new opportunities when we reveal some of our vulnerabilities? This choice gives us the space to learn, grow, evolve and transform.
True transformation can only happen when we build a solid foundation of self-compassion. The do-ing strategy only survives as long as we believe that external validation is the only access to happiness.
Becoming Our Own Source of Love
In our childhood, the helpless, dependent infant relies entirely on our caregivers to meet our physiological needs – we cannot survive without the warmth, food and shelter they provide. Where we often get confused is that we became reliable on our caregivers for our psychological needs too – we learned to depend on their recognition and validation for our sense of love and self-worth. Just as we become independent and capable of meeting our physiological needs, we can learn to meet our psychological needs too – we can become our own source of love and validation.
This requires courage to recognise that we are loveable in our be-ing not for the mask of our do-ing. With support we can develop the courage and self-compassion to accept that we are loveable for who we are, not for what we do.
We can learn to let go of our ‘happy when’ strategies. Let go of the need to prove our worth or satisfy the expectations of others. We can learn to be ‘happy now’.
The Path to “Happy Now”
Lasting transformation requires the courage to break free from old patterns and step into our true, authentic essence. This journey isn’t about becoming someone new; it’s about returning to who we are beneath the layers of and limitations of our do-ing and embracing the fullness of our authentic be-ing. It’s about discovering wholeness and balance that can only be found in both our strength and our vulnerability.
The happiness we seek is not dependent on external achievements or the validation of others. True, lasting happiness is found in accepting all that we are, and in realising that we are—and always have been—enough.
Clear view 