← Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Close the Identity Gap: Finding Yourself When You Feel Lost | John R. Miles EP 741
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Passion Struck, there's a period in every significant transformation that most people try to skip. It's the space between who you are and who you're becoming. You've realized the old script no longer makes sense. Maybe you've even walked away from it. But the new version of you hasn't arrived yet. You're in the gap. It feels like falling. It feels like fragmentation. It feels like you've lost your coordinates and you're suddenly a ghost in your own life. Most people try to sprint through this space because the silence is deafening. They try to fill it with noise, new titles, or old habits. But what if the void isn't the enemy? What if this identity gap is actually the forge where your truest self is being made? Stay with me today. We're going into that gap. Welcome to Passion Struck. I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters. Each week I sit down with change makers, creators, scientists and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming. Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention. Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection and impact is choosing to live like you matter. Hey friends, and welcome Back to episode 741 of Passion Struck. Before we dive into into today's deep exploration, I have something really special to share. For the past decade, I've been on a mission to understand a wound so many of us carry, even at the top of our game, that deep feeling of being fundamentally unseen. I'm thrilled to announce that my new book, the Mattering Creating a Life of Meaning and Worth, is now officially available for pre order. I wrote this because for years I lived what looked like a success story, but in reality, it was Really a slow study in disappearing decades as a C level executive, valued for what I could produce but unseen for who I truly was. I came to see how our systems have value engineered human worth right out of the equation. We don't just need to diagnose why we feel this way. We need a blueprint to reclaim it. The mattering effect is that blueprint built around the matter framework to help you restore your significance and stop disappearing. You can pre order your copy today at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, bookshop.org target or your favorite bookseller. Links are in the show notes. Today's episode is a direct companion to that journey. We're deep in our series, Life beyond the Script. Last week we talked about that jarring moment when the script, the roles, the rules, the expectations you followed simply stops making sense. But once the script cracks, you don't just step forward. You enter something often more terrifying. The identity gap. I want to share something from my own path. For years, I defined myself by those corporate Heights. The Fortune 500 title, the Billions of dollars of skill scope I oversaw. I thought my value lived in the size of the ego container I was building. When I left that world, it wasn't just a job I lost, it was my coordinates. I found myself performing an old version of John Miles that no longer existed. While the version speaking to you now was still a quiet whisper inside. I felt that fragmentation, the split between who I was supposed to be and who and who I was becoming. I tried to sprint through the silence, fill it with noise, new projects, anything. What I learned the hard way. The more you run from the gap, the wider it grows. We think the void is the enemy, but as we're going to explore today, the void is actually the forge. In this episode, we'll unpack the Jungian view of the eagle container and why it has to crack for real growth. Carrington Smith's story from our conversation back in episode 162 and how she navigated her own shattering and the three gaps you might be standing in right now. The identity gap, the fragmentation gap, and the fulfillment gap. Grab a notebook if you can. Take a deep breath. Let's begin. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life that matters. Now. Let that journey begin. We have all been conditioned to see life as a series of mountain peaks. You climb one, plant your flag, catch your breath, and immediately scan the horizon for the next summit to conquer. But what happens when you're down in the valley between those peaks? My most of us treat those transitions like a sprint. A career ends, a relationship dissolves, a long held dream quietly shifts shape. Our first instinct. Rush through the discomfort. Get from the old me to the new me as fast as humanly possible. Because that space in the middle, it feels like falling. We feel this urgent pressure to fill the void, grab a new title, a new partner, a new packed schedule. Anything to stop the free fall. But here's the truth I've come to see, and I suspect you've felt it too. You cannot hustle your way out of a soul level transition. The middle isn't a waste of time. It's not a detour. It's where the actual transformation happens. If you sprint through the gap, you just drag the old baggage, the old script, right into whatever comes next. That valley. That is what I call the identity gap. It's that disorienting space where your external script, the roles you've played for years, the titles you've worn like armor, the expectation others, and often we ourselves have placed on on you, no longer lines up with your internal soul. It's a fundamental misalignment between what I call your locus of knowing, that quiet internal truth, and your locus of showing the performance you put on for the world. This place has a name in psychology, too. Jungian analyst James Hollis calls it the liminal space. Limon in Latin means threshold. You're standing in the doorway. You're no longer fully in the room you just left, but you haven't yet stepped into the one ahead. You're suspended. To understand why this gap feels so terrifying, we have to look at how we actually build our lives. James Hollis says that the first half of life is dedicated to building what we might call the ego container. We spend decades constructing those walls made of professional achievements, social status, family roles, all the things that help us feel safe, competent and belonging in the world. We do it because we need to. It's how we adapt, survive, find our place. But eventually, that container starts to crack. And here's the key. That crack is not a sign of failure. It's a sign of expansion. You aren't breaking down, you're breaking through the quiet disorientation you're feeling. It's simply the old version of you making room reluctantly, painfully, for the person you're becoming. And when that container finally shatters, like it did for the woman whose story we'll walk through next, that's when the real possibility begins. To really understand how deeply we can get stuck in that gap, we have to go back to the very beginning. The script we were handed long before we could even read it ourselves. Back on July 13, 2022, in episode 162, I had one of the most profound conversations of my career with Carrington Smith. Carrington's life is one of the clearest, most moving illustrations I have ever encountered of what happens when your entire ego container is built on external validation and what happens when it shatters. Carrington grew up in a family where value was measured by two narrow pillars, athleticism and beauty. Her father was a professional tennis player, and in that household, your worth was tied directly to how you performed on the court. But at just five years old, the same age when I suffered my own traumatic brain injury, Carrington experienced a massive eye injury. In an instant, she couldn't see the ball anymore. She couldn't play the game of tennis. And because she could no longer fulfill the athlete's script, she was treated as disposable, pushed to the edges of her own family, no longer fitting the role they'd written for her. When the athlete script collapsed, she leaned hard into the other one, beauty. But even there, validation was withheld. Her father told her outright she wasn't the pretty one, a comment that carved what she calls a deep soul wound. This is where the identity gap so often begins. For so many of us, we spend years, decades, even, trying to patch or outrun cracks in a container someone else designed for us. Carrington pushed forward law school, high achievement, the whole external success track, trying to finally prove she was enough, performing the version of herself she thought would earn her belonging. But the container couldn't hold forever. The true liminal shattering came during law school, when she survived a horrific assault. In the aftermath, the people meant to be her anchors, her family, responded with silence and disappointment instead of supporting. That was the moment. It didn't just crack, it shattered completely. In our conversation, Carrington described standing in front of the mirror and seeing a monster. Not just the physical changes from the trauma and its scars. She was seeing the death of the compliant daughter, the perfect law student, the girl who spent her life trying to fit the script. She lived in that in between for years. No longer the daughter her father approved of, but not yet the woman she was destined to become on the outside, she kept going through the motions. That's the fragmentation gap I've written about so much. She was a ghost in her own life, performing an old role while the real self was still forming in the shadows. It took six long years of sitting in that silence, deprogramming the locus of showing the addiction to being pretty perfect, athletic, approved, and slowly turning into her locus of knowing. And here's the beautiful part. Carrington didn't escape. By adopting a brand new script handed to her, she became the author of her own story. She realized her scrappiness, her sharp wit, even the trauma itself. These weren't flaws to hide. They were facets of a far more resilient, authentic identity. She stopped trying to glue the shattered pieces together. Instead, she asked the deeper question, what is my soul actually meant to hold? If her story resonates, and I know it will for many of you, I highly recommend going back to that full, raw conversation in episode 162. It's powerful. But today, as we reflect on Carrington's journey, we see three distinct gaps she had to navigate. You might recognize yourself in one of them right now. In the next section, I'm going to break them down. The identity gap, the fragmentation gap, and the fulfillment gap. So you can name exactly where you are in your own transition and start to see your way through. But before we continue, I want to pause for just a moment. One of the core ideas running through this whole series is this. You don't move through life just once. You move through it in chapters. And most of us, we rarely stop to really look at where we are right now or who we're quietly becoming in the next one. That's exactly why, alongside this series, I'm building something a little deeper. Over on theignitedlife.net there, I'm publishing companion reflections, articles and guided prompts tied to each episode designed to help you pause and examine your own life with intention. What chapter are you in? What's shifting beneath the surface? And what might it look like to step forward not by default, but on purpose? If this conversation is stirring something in you and you want to go deeper into the work, head over to theignitedlife.net Explore the Reflections. Join the community. It's all there for you. And I want to say a heartfelt thank you to our sponsors. Their support is what makes this show and these honest, soul level conversations possible. When you support the brands that support us, you keep passion strap growing and reaching more people who need these ideas. Now a quick break for our sponsors.
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You're listening to Passion Struck right here on the Passion Struck Network. Let's dive back in. Now that we've seen the shattered container through Carrington's eyes, let's name the three gaps she navigated and that you might be navigating, too. When you find yourself in that liminal space between versions of yourself, it usually isn't just one vague feeling of being lost. It sharpens. It falls into one of three categories, naming which gap you're standing in. That's often the first real step toward reconnecting your internal locus of knowing, the quiet voice that already knows the truth. First, the identity gap. Your soul versus Your role. This is the fundamental misalignment we've been exploring. It's the crack between your deep internal soul and the external script you've been handed or built. Think back to Carrington Smith. Her soul was scrappy, resilient, full of sharp wit, but the script demanded she be the pretty athlete or the compliant law student. When you're in this gap, you feel like an imposter in your own life. You're checking all the boxes, career moves, relationships, expectations. But the person checking them. It doesn't feel like you anymore. Have you ever looked around at your day and thought, this is working, but me? Second, the fragmentation gap. This one creeps in when you're trying to live in two or more worlds at once. I dove deep into this in episode 657, where we explored how we perform the old version of ourselves for friends, family, colleagues. Because we're afraid. Afraid that showing the emerging new you might mean they won't recognize you. Or worse, they'll reject you. So you end up divided oneself in the boardroom or at the family table. Another self alone with your thoughts at night. It's exhausting. It takes massive energy. Constant identity maintenance. You become a ghost in both worlds. Carrington lived this for years, going through the motions on the outside while the real self was still forming quietly in the shadows. There's that divided feeling, that energy drain ring, true for you right now. Third, the fulfillment gap. This might be the sneakiest and most common for high achievers. Like so many of us listening, I dedicated episode 654 to it. You've climbed the mountain for 10, 20, 30 years. You have the title, a solid salary, external validation, stacked high. You reach the summit, you plant the flag, and you look around and it's empty. The script promised that success equals happiness. But the math doesn't add up. You've outgrown the ego container of pure achievement. Now you're standing in a gap where those old metrics no longer feed. Your soul ever hit a big milestone. Smiled for the photos, then felt that quiet dread. This is it. Why does it feel so hollow? The real danger in these gaps isn't the discomfort. They're meant to unsettle us. The danger is rushing to fill them with the wrong things. More hustle for the identity gap, more people pleasing for fragmentation, more consumption or status for fulfillment. But as James Hollis reminds us so clearly, these gaps are actually invitations, not breakdowns. Your soul is saying, the old version of you is too small for the life I want to live. Now it's time to expand. So if any of this is landing, if you're in one of these gaps, or maybe a mix, take heart. Naming it is the beginning of navigation. Next, we'll shift from understanding these gaps to actually living in them. How to stop the sprint, Quiet the old noise, and start trusting that still small voice of your internal authority. So if you're standing in one of these gaps right now, the identity gap, the fragmentation gap, the fulfillment gap, the big question hits, what do you actually do? How do you move from this liminal space without rushing to the wrong destination or forcing a fix that just replays the old script first? And this is the hardest part. Stop the sprint. Our culture screams also harder. Find a new goal, a new destination, new busyness to outrun the discomfort. But in the liminal space, movement isn't always progress. If you're running just to escape the silence, you're probably sprinting right back into another version of the external script. What this space asks for is radical patience. You have to let the old version of you fully die before the new one can be born. This is the middle where, as James Hollis puts it, we're invited to reauthor our lives not from ego's demands, but from the soul's deeper agenda. Next, shift the locus of knowing. Up until now, most of us have navigated by the locus of showing external signals, approval from bosses, likes, titles and metrics. In the gap, those signals go quiet. The compass spins. That's the invitation to develop a locus of knowing, that internal, subjective voice of the soul. It doesn't need a script or a performance to justify itself. It's the quiet authority Carrington Smith discovered when she stopped chasing pretty athlete approval and started owning her scrappy, resilient survivor self. To hear this voice, embrace the silence, spend time in reflection, question the shoulds that have run your life for decades, journal them, walk with them, sit with them without fixing. The soul speaks in whispers, not shouts. Finally find meaning in the turbulence itself. Resilience here isn't toughing it out or white knuckling through. It's shifting the question. Instead of when will this end? Ask what is the transition trying to teach me about who I am becoming? When you stop seeing the gap as pure fragmentation and start cherishing the different facets emerging, your scrappiness, your depth, your unscripted edges, the fear starts to ease. You realize you're not falling apart, you're evolving. You're allowing the new version to emerge naturally, rather than forcing a fresh mask over an old wound. This isn't easy. It takes courage to stay in the middle long enough for the soul to speak. But that's exactly where the real transformation lives. As we close today's episode, I want you to pause and look at the gap you're standing in right now. Whether it's the identity gap, the fragmentation gap, or the fulfillment gap, see it for what it truly is. It isn't a hole you've fallen into. It's the space where the old script finally loses its power over you. We often think the goal of life is to be whole, consistent, put together at all times. But as we've seen through James Hollis's lens and through the live courage of Carrington Smith back in episode 162, the most profound growth happens precisely when we are in pieces. The discomfort you feel today, those are the birth pangs of the next version of you. If you feel like a ghost performing an old role, or if the weight of success that once lit you up now feels hollow, listen to that quiet whisper that is your sole asking for a larger container. So here's what I want to leave you with. A simple prompt to sit with this week. I don't want you to hustle through it. I want you to be still with it. The question what part of your old script are you still reciting simply because you're afraid of the silence that follows? Is it a job that no longer fits? A way of interacting with your family that feels performative, a definition of success you've quietly outgrown? Write it down, acknowledge it, and then give yourself permission to let it go. You don't need the new script ready yet. You just need to be brave enough to stand in the doorway long enough for your soul to speak. The identity gap is where the Passion Struck life is forged. It's where you stop being a character in someone else's play and start becoming the architect of your own existence. If you're in the middle of a transition right now, remember you aren't lost. You are becoming Next on Passion Struck, I'm joined by Dr. Robert Wachter, one of the leading voices on the future of medicine. We'll explore how artificial intelligence is transforming healthcare from faster diagnoses to reducing clinician burnout, reshaping decisions and delivery. But it also raises big questions. What happens to human judgment? What role will doctors play going forward? And how do we make sure technology enhances care without losing the compassion at its heart? It's a timely, fascinating conversation about where medicine and we are headed. I'm more optimistic about healthcare AI than I am about the AI and the rest of our lives. Because in health care I can't find a doctor, a nurse, or a patient who says the system's just perfect and we don't need to screw around with it. It's delivering the high quality, safe, accessible care at an affordable price. Nobody thinks that, and I don't think we can deliver on what patients need unless we have the assistance of a technology like AI. So it really is both the quality of the technology and the desperate need that we have to make things better. If this episode resonated with you, if it stirred something, please share it with someone who might need to hear it right now. Leave a five star rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It really helps these conversations reach more people and dive deeper into the reflections from this series@theignitedlife.net until next time. Remember, you don't have to control everything that happens to you, but you can influence how you respond and how you move forward. I'm John Miles and you've been passion struck.