Identity: How Protecting Your Ego Kills Your Creativity

Kaizen Creativity: The Science of Creativity & Innovation

How do you view yourself? What identity have you created for yourself? When you tell yourself the story of you, what do you say? What experiences have shaped you? What beliefs do you hold? What values guide you? Your answers to all of these questions make up your identity. They are what psychological researchers would call your “Self-concept.”

Your identity plays a massive role in your life, but it does so in the background. We don’t explicitly say “I’m a kind person, so I’m going to help this person.” Yet that’s exactly what happens. Our behavior is shaped by the identity that we hold for ourselves. We take actions whenever there’s a nice fit between who we are and what we need to do, but we procrastinate, ignore, or even attack ideas that don’t fit our world view.

In your brain, there’s a very special type of neuron called a “Defense Neuron.” There are all types of specialized neurons in the brain. Some focus on facial recognition, some are responsible for counting numbers, and some are so highly specialized that they only light up when you see a particular person or celebrity. Defense neurons are the same, except they special in something incredibly awesome. Their job is to protect your ego. They only light up when you are exposed to ideas that don’t fit how you see yourself. They light up when a democrat is exposed to republican views, or when a republic is exposed to a liberal one. They light up when a kind person witnesses an act of cruelty. They light up when a miser or penny-pincher is asked for money. Their only job is to protect your identity… to protect your ego.

All procrastination can be traced by to defense neurons in your brain. Why didn’t you start your college term paper sooner? Because defense neurons in your brain were afraid of failing. They were afraid that doing a bad job on the paper would result in the loss of your ego. They chose to protect your identity, even when it wasn’t actually in your best interest to do so. So why did you eventually sit yourself down and write the paper? Once again, defense neurons. They were confronted with the growing reality that NOT turning in a paper would result in a loss of ego. Earlier on, the defense neurons tried to protect you by keeping you away from what needed to be done. Now they’re trying to protect you by pushing you towards its completion. It used the same system to arrive at two wildly different conclusions.

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