It may not be asked more often than “Are we there yet?” but “Who Am I?” is a question that comes up often enough and it deserves an answer.

The Grasshopper was savvy enough not to say “Thee” answer, but an answer. Here is his definition of who we are:

That creativity comes from somewhere and that somewhere is the unbridled you.

The trained elephant you see in the circus or zoo is not the same one you would see in the wild. It would look the same, smell the same (eew) but there is a difference in what they do.

The same is true for you.

We become our conditioning and we do the same things, the same way, rarely allowing our creativity to show us a different path.

It’s as though we have a stunt double in life. The “Us” that lives on the surface doing all the tricks, and the us that is the creative force that makes all those tricks, and more, possible.

We are not our stunt double. We think that’s who we are and that stale thinking blocks who we really are (our creativity) from surfacing more often.

We become our patterned way of doing things. Think of patterns as confined creativity. Creativity once flowed into what we did, but we trapped it there and called the resulting pattern “Us.”

We are not our patterns any more than a trained seal is a horn player.

We are not our thinking and we are not our patterns; we are the creativity that flows into them.

The trick is to discover that you aren’t the label you’ve given yourself, even if it’s written in ink. That false identification takes on a life of its own never wanting to be found out.

Creativity is your identity’s worst enemy. Your identity lives in fear of being exposed and will do anything and everything to keep that from happening.

Did you ever notice how a burst of creativity puts cracks in the cemented thinking of what’s possible?

That’s the power of creativity. That’s the power of you.

Just take a moment to reflect on the idea that you are creativity trapped in a conditioned brain. That tiny bit of recognition allows more creativity to come through.

The more often you notice, the less often you’ll identify with your thinking and your patterns.

“That’s just who I am” will transform into “I am the creativity that allows me to do so much more.”

You aren’t your past and you aren’t your patterns. You are the creativity that flows into what you do.

Creativity will take on a larger role in your life each time you interrupt the limited thinking that you are what you currently think or do.

“Who am I?” is a question that will take you in circles until you discover that you aren’t a “Who,” but rather the creativity that flows into what you do.

All the best,

John