"New York is Your Ego's Home" - On Shedding Ego and Shifting Identity
“I just want to go back to my stupid little life in New York!” I screamed on the phone.
It had been a wild ride.
In Brinkley, Arkansas, my car battery died.
In Oklahoma City, I had to actively talk myself out of turning around and going back home.
Everything was uncomfortable.
In New York City, I felt completely safe being on the train at 2:00 a.m. with people having behaviors and yelling. Junkies shooting up near me in the park, or homeless men exposing themselves rarely caused me to flinch.
Yet, driving through the mountains to a sacred church in New Mexico had me so uncomfortable, I couldn’t stand it.
It was only up until a phone conversation with a friend that I realized the truth. As he so eloquently put it, “New York is your ego’s home.”
When we are on the precipice of change in our lives, there’s an enormous level of discomfort.
You can see this especially in the realm of addiction. One often faces the choice of the perceived safety of numbness from using drugs or alcohol or moving forward into the discomfort of dealing with parts of themselves that are painful.
Yet, the discomfort is always the way through.
In this episode, I talk about shedding layers of identity, and the way the brain functions to keep us stuck in areas of our lives we very much want to leave behind.
I also talk about my New York City identity, and how the illusion of safety has kept me from shifting in my own life.
What appears one way isn’t always the truth.
