Your Identity Profile is the unique combination of personality, strengths, skills, personal values and passions. Imagine these individual components as test tubes that are poured into the beaker of your life where they organically combine to form your Identity molecule.
The balcony side of your Identity Profile is you at your best. It’s the synergy of all the positive attributes of your Identity molecule. The basement side of your Identity Profile is you not at your best. It’s how the components of your Identity Profile predispose you toward self-defeating behaviors that sabotage relationships and undermine your influence.
The individual components of both your balcony and basement can interact with each other to amplify the impact of your interaction with others. The balcony for positive impact, the basement for negative impact.
But there’s an important difference. Combining the components of your balcony requires effort and intentionality. The components of your basement interact without your conscious effort.
The basement side of your Identity Profile is quietly but actively conspiring against you all the time.
Leveraging the positive impact of your balcony is an uphill climb. The force multipliers of your basement are default settings, the path of least resistance.
I wish this wasn’t true. But it is. And it explains why it is so important that you understand how you are most likely to sabotage relationships and undermine your influence (potential derailers) as well as when or where it is most likely to happen (vulnerable situations). Armed with that growing self-awareness you can design mitigation strategies that actively disrupt your derailers.
For more information on how to disrupt your derailers, checkout this episode of Learning @ the Speed of Life where you can access a FREE Disrupt Your Derailers Worksheet to help you apply it.
