Here's why you're a bit f___ed up.

Building an identity is like bricklaying a house… except that you start laying the bricks when you’re two.

I live on a rural property, and over the last six months or so I’ve been collecting bluestone blocks. My plan is to build a little bluestone cottage, by hand, largely by myself. I love the quaint little cottages that early European settlers built in Australia (which is not an endorsement of many other activities they engaged in during that brutal period), and I want to build one myself.

Of course, I have zero bricklaying experience, so I need to develop some skills.

I don’t want to learn basic bricklaying techniques as I start building the base of the walls of the cottage, however. I need to learn how to mix mortar properly, how long it takes to cure, how to smear it in effectively to ensure the joins between each block are firm and secure. The first row of bricks is the most important row of bricks; all the others will be perched atop them!

Just as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, a brick is only as stable as the other bricks upon which it’s stacked.

So, before I start building the cottage, I’m going to spend a month or two building other things out of bluestone. Perhaps some raised garden beds, or an outdoor fire pit. I want to hone my skills as a bricklayer to an acceptable level before I start laying down the stones that will form the basis of the walls of my dream cottage.

As a mentor in the Thought Leaders community and a coach that teaches public speaking, leadership, and sales skills, I’m keenly aware of how the identity that each of us subscribes to has an enormous impact on our effectiveness in almost all domains of life. The deep, underlying beliefs of who we are and what we’re capable of have vastly more influence on the way we conduct ourselves than the skills and knowledge which is layered on top.

It doesn’t matter how good your public speaking skills are in a mechanical sense if you have a deep-seated belief that you’re not worthy of sharing your ideas with others.

A brick is only as stable as the bricks upon which it is stacked.

Philosophically, it’s not entirely clear to me what “my identity” actually is. In a practical sense, I think of it as a cloud of ideas that I hold to be fundamental to who I am and how I act, which I deeply believe without choice, and generally without deliberate scrutiny. I think many of the beliefs we hold which are central to our identity are beliefs which we may never have actually recognised and considered. They’re just kinda ‘there’, affecting us every day without consideration or consent.

I think of our identity as like a cottage we’ve built for ourselves, and each of these beliefs as like a brick we’ve laid along the way.

The complication, then, is that you started bricklaying when you were, like, two years old. You didn’t have a practice run first, and nobody really showed you how to do it. You just grabbed some belief bricks, and some experience mortar, and started laying. But you weren’t very good at it. How could you be? You were two! Nobody is good at anything when they’re two! But you didn’t have a choice but to start laying bricks and learn as you go.

And now, twenty, thirty, forty years or more later, you’re pretty darn good at laying bricks. You’ve had a lot of practice. The bricks you’re laying now are perfectly aligned, and firmly connected.

But brick is only as stable as the bricks upon which it is stacked. And if you’re like me—or pretty much any other human I’ve ever met—some of your foundational bricks are laid all wonky.

Maybe your self-confidence brick has a big crack in it.

Or your self-worth brick is falling out.

Or your optimism brick is back-to-front.

A few poorly laid fundamental bricks are de-stabilising an otherwise beautifully crafted wall. It’s a real shame. But it’s not a death sentence. You can replace and re-lay bricks at the bottom of the wall. It’s a bit more difficult than laying new ones in clear air at the top, but it’s not impossible. You’ll need to do some reinforcing, you’ll need to knock a few out and clean up the mess.

But it is possible.

Be as compassionate as possible to the tiny little person who made a mistake laying the brick all those years ago. There’s no sense in judging that person—your childish past self— harshly. Be as compassionate with that person as you would a little two-year old toddler today. Now that you’ve had a lot more practice and experience building an identity, you can go back and reset a few fundamental bricks.

It can be life-changing.