TL;DR
Whom am I speaking to? Who is this going to help?
My Practical Experience
My Mind Dump.
Good hell, this is the start of a long and complicated issue on answering the question: “who am I”.
This may include aspects of Jungian Psychology. This post was prompted by Rollo May’s book, “Man’s search for himself”.
Here’s at least a little bit of context to start the discussion.
Self-Identity versus Self-Delusion: what’s the difference?
The key difference between developing a sense of self identity (that’s independent of external opinions) and being delusional lies in its grounding in reality and evidence.
Objectively define your metrics on a pass/fail criteria, and honestly ask yourself if you meet the mark.
If your self image is one of a successful entrepreneurs, then show me your numbers. How much did you sell? How is your P&L statement? How big is your company?
Are you a family man? How much time do you spend with your family? Can your kids testify on the quality time you’ve spent with them? Is your family’s needs taken care of?
Are you smart? Have you published any researched? Or have you obtained from life exactly what you wanted using your smartness? Are you well spoken and articulate? How quickly can you learn a new topic?
Often, we may start with abstract ideas of what we want to be and daydream one day becoming that person–but that often leads to imaginary results that have no grounding in reality.
If instead you took the Bayesian approach, where you allow Data to inform beliefs, rather than letting your belief inform the data.
Asking yourself, “how well do my actions (data) supports what I believe (self identity)”