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Discover your true identity to live the life you want

9.16.25

Learn how waking up to the truth of your own being is the very first step to living the life you desire

Let me clarify something right away: I’m not here to sell you on an expensive retreat, spiritual boot camp, or meditation seminar to "find yourself."

In fact, that entire search—what you might call spiritual seeking or self-improvement—might actually be part of the problem if you’ve been trying to “find yourself” for a while.

This article is about helping you remember who you really are. That might sound presumptuous (this is the internet, after all, and I don’t know you personally), but please stick with me for a bit. 

In the next few minutes, we’ll explore something deeper than self-concepts, identities, or affirmations. Something that can dramatically shift how you relate to yourself and the world.

I believe that truly understanding who you are at a fundamental level is the foundation for a life of greater peace, alignment, and purpose. As a coach, this is the insight I aim to cultivate in others more than anything else.

To do that, I’ll borrow two core ideas from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): the conceptual self and the contextual self. These aren’t my inventions, but their roots trace back to ancient yogic and spiritual teachings. 

ACT simply gives these concepts a scientific backing that resonates in the modern world. I hope this article will resonate with you regardless of the particular lens (scientific, spiritual, or a mix of both) that you view reality through. 

The trap of the conceptual self

Let’s begin with what you are not.

The conceptual self is the mental image you carry around of who you think you are. It’s the collection of labels, roles, memories, and imagined future scenarios that form a kind of internal biography. The “voice” in your head is sort of like the author of this conceptual self, consistently speaking it into existence. 

It sounds like:

"I’m a mother."

"I’m successful."

"I’m broken."

"I’m the funny one."

This self appears when you reflect on your past or imagine your future. It’s the person you picture walking into a party, nailing a job interview, or reliving your high school glory days.

But here’s the catch: this self is never fully true. It’s a thought-constructed approximation—a highlight reel or cautionary tale. It might feel convincing, but it’s always partial and temporary.

When I tell clients this, many push back:

"But I am a mother."

"I really was the shit in high school."

"I am fabulous and amazing."

"Or… I’m definitely a giant piece of shit nobody loves."

To which I say: Sure, sometimes.

But not always.

Are you only a mother? Are you always fabulous? Are you forever unlovable?

Start investigating any self-description and you’ll find it crumbles under scrutiny. None of these ideas about you are true 100% of the time. That’s because they’re made of thoughts—and thoughts are fleeting, inconsistent, and shaped by context.

This is one of the earliest and most important insights in personal awakening: the image you hold of yourself is not the same as who you truly are. A pithier way to say that is—you’re never what you think you are! 

You are not the voice in your head. You are not your mental biography. You are not the image you construct to make sense of your life.

You are the one who experiences those things. How could you possibly be something you experience? 

The truth of the contextual self

Now let’s talk about who you are.

The contextual self is the silent, steady awareness behind all your experiences. It’s the basic sense of "I am" that’s been with you since childhood.

It’s not a thought or label. It’s a felt sense of being. And it only ever exists right now.

Whereas the conceptual self lives in memory and imagination, the contextual self lives only in the present moment. It’s what allows all of your experiences—thoughts, sensations, roles, environments—to arise in the first place.

This self is sometimes called "consciousness." In Buddhist traditions, it’s called "emptiness" (though I prefer the term “expansiveness”). Ramana Maharshi called it the thought of "I am."

Here’s an experiment: ask yourself silently, "I wonder what my next thought will be?" And then wait. 

Notice the space of awareness that opens up in that pause? That stillness? That is your contextual self.

It’s always here. Silent. Witnessing. Spacious. And when you live from this place instead of your conceptual self, you live with far greater peace and alignment. Here’s why: 

Suffering happens when we cling to the conceptual self

Let me illustrate this with a personal example.

Each summer, I spend time in the Fire Island Pines—a beach village known for its gay male community. It’s full of beautiful, social, confident men.

When I arrive, my conceptual self gets very loud because I’m surrounded by peers, and we all have this innate, human drive to be special. What we think of as “insecurity” is really the conceptual self feeling threatened to be exposed for the costume it really is. 

Nevertheless, I tell myself that I’m handsome, fun, interesting, and that everyone will want to talk to me!

I imagine myself being invited to every party, turning heads at tea dance, radiating charm on the beach.

But reality never measures up exactly to these images.

I get a few party invites, I waddle more than strut in my swimsuit, and a few guys talk to me at the daily tea dance, but I’m not exactly getting mobbed with attention. 

When this happens, my conceptual self begins to spin: Maybe I’m actually ugly! Maybe I’m boring! Maybe no one likes me! The conceptual self can’t reconcile that reality doesn’t match up with its image of itself, and this creates cognitive dissonance. 

Which mostly feels like shit. Because now I have this very negative mental image of myself, and my inner narrator, the conceptual self’s voice, is telling me how I need to work out more, get a spray tan, and find better fitting Speedos. 

But with practice and mindfulness, eventually I catch myself. I whisper, Ahh… hi conceptual self. I forgot that you feel very real, but you’re not true. 

And within a few minutes, I’m back to that expansive, silent space. To the real me. The totality of this moment.

In some contexts on Fire Island, I am handsome and magnetic. In others, not so much. And this is true for my daily life, and yours as well. 

We’re all of the things some of the time. No label is truly definitive of who we are because when we’re living as our contextual selves, we’re really pure potentiality. We’re infinitely malleable to various situations, relationships, and contexts. 

Why self-improvement isn’t the way

Whenever someone tells me they’re trying to “better themselves,” I suspect that they might be caught in the illusion of the conceptual self. Because the contextual self is never improved—it simply is, and because it just is, it is infinitely worthy of love and care. 

Straying away from this truth is what begins our suffering. Which, assuming your basic human needs are met, is almost exclusively in your mind. Your suffering is, like the conceptual self, just a bunch of thoughts that feel very, very real. 

In particular, one way to view suffering is the dissonance we face when our conceptual selves are not reflected in reality, and we start the process of “seeking” or “improvement.” We look to change ourselves or our external reality to better match our conceptual self.  

If our conceptual self is "attractive," we’ll work endlessly to make sure the world validates that. We chase abs, compliments, and sex. We spend lots of money on gym memberships, Botox, and even plastic surgery. 

But no matter how much we get, the conceptual self is never satisfied. Because we don’t actually control reality. We can spend endless amounts of time and money to make ourselves attractive, but the second someone rejects us and unknowingly violates our rigid conceptual self, we lose it. 

We might lash out at the rejecter because facing that dissonance is too painful for our minds. Or we might just go back to the drawing board of false control—”maybe if I get an 8-pack instead of a 6-pack I won’t get rejected?” 

The thing we’re trying to actually improve is an illusion. Remember, the conceptual self is just a bunch of thoughts in our mind—it has no basis in reality. 

Trying to secure a fixed identity in a changing world is like trying to hold your reflection still in a river.

But, that doesn’t mean you should just do nothing with your life and abandon all your earthly efforts and go be a monk! 

Act from your values instead of self-improvement 

If you’re already perfectly whole and worthy right here and right now, why do anything at all? Why not just sit around all day and just vegetate? 

Well, if you try doing that, you’ll quickly realize you get bored. It’s almost like life is always gently tugging you towards action all on its own. When you have an obligation-free day, you may feel compelled to go to the gym, read a book, call a friend, or paint something. 

We call these little tugs towards action your values—and they are essential for a life well-lived. When you live from your values, you feel, frankly, awesome. Like life is beautiful and incredible for no reason at all. When you’re not living your values, you tend to feel stagnant, stuck, and shitty. 

Values are infinitely creative and infinitely unique. Your values are actually what make you uniquely you—not your identity! 

As I said, we all have a drive to be special, unique, and impactful in this world—and our values give us the path to do that! 

But our pesky conceptual selves makes this quite difficult because the mind’s ultimate goal for you is biological—it is permanent safety. And it compels you to constantly identify as someone because this creates the illusion of permanence. The conceptual self is your mind’s attempt to keep you safe by giving you a predictable, fixed model of who to be–eventhough that imaginary person is constantly in conflict with reality. 

We explored how this dissonance gets us into the trap of self-improvement above. And obviously, time spent constantly improving yourself can take you away from living your values. 

But a conceptual self can also actively block you from realizing a value, too. 

As a kid, I was constantly told that I wasn’t athletic. Naturally, my mind created a conceptual self around that—we don’t do sports, we do videogames! This limited self-definition, programmed into me by others, prevented me from ever realizing that I actually have a value around physical movement and activity. 

I loved running around the house and dancing as a kid! I hated baseball, soccer, and football, but I probably would’ve loved dance or gymnastics. Unfortunately, those roles weren’t acceptable for boys in my hometown. So instead, I had to wait until I was an adult to become a yoga teacher and activate that value. 

I hope this example shows that society and early caregivers also play a massive role in the development of our conceptual selves. Sometimes that’s to our benefit, but in unseen ways, it can be to our detriment. 

And to complicate things even more—sometimes we confuse our values with our conceptual self! 

Take going to the gym for example. Are you doing that because you want to improve something about yourself? That’s actually your conceptual self sneakily nudging you to invest in it more. The belief hiding under that may be something like “If I look better, more people will find me attractive and therefore I’ll be worthy of their love!” 

But if you’re just going to the gym because you love movement and love pushing the limits of your physique, that’s a value speaking. You could do that joyfully for the rest of your life without being on the never-ending treadmills of external validation or self-improvement. 

As a general rule, if the activity comes from fear, lack, or a sense of limitation of forcedness, it’s coming from your conceptual self. If it comes from a place of authenticity, ease, joy, fun, and levity, it’s a value. That doesn’t mean never do hard things. It means never grind doing shit you don’t like solely because you think it’s going to improve your own or others’ perception of yourself

Let’s explore this together

Connecting with your contextual self and untangling your values from the fears of your conceptual self is the work of a lifetime. And I should also say that perfection is never the goal here. You will likely never make values-based decisions from your contextual self 100% of the time. 

Once you’ve awakened your contextual self, you will constantly get pulled back into identification, suffer, realize why you’re suffering, and then come back to your true nature eventually. 

But once you touch the contextual self, it never permanently goes back to sleep. To use a movie metaphor, it’s the equivalent of Neo taking the red pill in The Matrix. There’s no putting consciousness back to sleep. And that’s a beautiful blessing because it means for the rest of your life, you will always and forever only be a few breaths away from internal peace. 

For many people, this insight feels like waking up from a bad dream. And in many ways, it is. 

You’re waking up from the prison of who you thought you were and realizing that you can become whoever and whatever you feel called to become with your values guiding you. 

If you’d like a guide on this journey, I’m here for you! Reach out and we can explore all of this stuff together. 

Photo credit: A.C. via Unsplash

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