Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye. A friend who recently retired told me he is having difficulty figuring out who he is without a job.

He spent his entire life working and developing a routine without ever developing a personality.

And he is not alone, but this episode is not about retirement, it's

about figuring out who we are.

A personality is defined as the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual.

There's nothing distinctive about me, he said.

My beliefs are not my own, they were handed to me, and I've never reached for

anything in life except for a promotion.

I have tried so hard to blend in, I faded into the background.

Few people ever question what moral qualities are distinctive to them unless certain life events force them to self-reflect.

My buddy Mike, for example, wrote a book about his time in prison called Going O M where for the first time in his life nobody

cared that he was a CEO, a husband, a father, or anything other than inmate number 604-19066.

All the labels with which he had previously identified were stripped from him,

and it took going to prison for him to realize he was already in one. He essentially freed himself

while behind bars. A woman who recently lost her only grandchild told me she has to constantly

remind herself of everything else she was before she became a grandmother,

where she starts feeling like she lost everything.

And a year after my buddy Jesse came out as gay, he realized his orientation is only as much a part of him as his hair color, not his personality.

Who are we is a deep question, and it's important not to confuse identity with personality.

Someone can identify as Christian for example but not be Christ-like just like

according to Jewish law I am technically Jewish by birth, even if I never identify as such.

The questions that constantly ring in my head are, how am I Jewish?

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