147. Reconsidering Our Understanding of Identity with Lucia Doynel
Assumptions and Identity
What assumptions do you make about yourself? What assumptions do you make about others?
Whether it’s about how someone looks or the language they speak, the assumptions about identity that we make about ourselves and each other are often not supporting us in our lives, in our efforts to be visible, or in making the types of impact that we want to make in the world.
Lucia Doynel joins Erica for a conversation about identity, assumptions, the stories we tell about ourselves and others, and breaking down the boxes we put ourselves and each other in.
Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:
The layers of identity and the boxes we put ourselves and others in
How calls for diversity are contradicted by pressure to assimilate
How other people’s assumptions and projections about us show up in person and online
Turning comparison into inspiration
Showing Up Authentically
Lucia Doynel is a Los Angeles-based, Argentinean-born photographer & educator. She helps people feel comfortable in front of the camera using Spiritual Psychology tools.
Creating a safe space for vulnerability and authentic expression is rooted in honesty and caring. She believes that words are a powerful tool for intention. Accepting our humanness is key to self-empowerment and letting ourselves be visible.
Lucia works closely with how we relate to ourselves as we are being in front of the camera.
She uses multiple Spiritual Psychology tools and techniques to support you in letting go of any challenges that you may feel in the moment, from shyness, to judgments about your appearance, supporting you in letting go of the fears and doubts that are keeping you from authentically showing who you truly are with the world.
Lucia has lived in the US since 2010 and shares her life with her partner and two adorable, trouble-making cats.
Identity Has Layers
On the Pause on the Play® Podcast Lucia says that identity is multi-layered from the personal, to the social, to your neighborhood and up to your cultural or national identity. At every layer, there are boxes that you could be put in.
For Lucia, that box was shaped by growing up as a woman in Argentina surrounded by a culture of machismo.
“If I think about it from a place of where I came from and where I am right now, I feel like I was never able to fit in a box that I was given.”
She continues that even when she stepped out of the social and cultural box she was born into by moving to the US, others would put her in another box not of her choosing based on how others perceive her being a woman, being an immigrant, having an accent, etc
“But because I was able to break away from the older box, then for me, there was no box at all…So I feel like identity becomes what others perceive of us, but also what we perceive of ourselves.”
Erica adds that culturally we all grow up with the boxes of what’s considered normal, and when we’re taken out of that context, some of the new boxes around us might look familiar or be what we would choose for ourselves, but we have to make agreements with ourselves, “that this is what I am choosing for me, because this is what I want, not what I was told I had to do.”
Diversity and Assimilation
Lucia became a permanent resident in the United States via the green card lottery in 2008, which is meant to encourage applicants from low migration countries to emigrate to the US.
Though the stated goal of the lottery is to increase diversity, Erica observes that “we want to be diverse…but [we] don’t actually want to create the systems and structures to support that.”
She continues that the expectation for immigrants to assimilate in American culture is an example of not actually supporting diversity, but “taking people that are from different places and forcing them to do that same thing that you and everyone else is doing.”
An aspect of this expectation can be how people with accents are perceived and treated. Erica asks Lucia how her accent has impacted her personally or professionally.
Lucia recalls a job she had at 19 as a customer service agent in Argentina for American companies and that the first part of her training there was on mimicking an American accent.
While being able to speak with an American accent would help protect Lucia and her coworkers from abuse from customers, Erica points out the contradiction of the way Americans can have an affinity for a “sexy” accent in one context but be abusive to someone with an accent in another.
“Let’s penalize someone for having [an accent] and yet, oh, but we want you to be diverse.”
Lucia adds, “It’s the entitlement of ‘you need to speak perfectly or otherwise I will not understand you.’”
She says she still makes efforts to enunciate her English very clearly because she has a multi-national audience, “but I’m realizing that a part of me felt up until now that I had to make an effort…And [now] I know the way that I speak is worthy enough.”
Assumptions and Projection
Lucia’s experience around her accent and assimilation extends to how she presents in person, as she is white-passing. “If I do not open my mouth, my experience is very different from when I do open my mouth.”
She recalls working as a photographer at a ski resort in Vail, Colorado for a winter and being on a bus speaking Spanish with friends and being told to “go back to your country and stop taking our jobs” by another passenger.
She says that while she can empathize with the precarity of living and working in a city that has very seasonal employment, “I could have had a New Yorker accent and they wouldn’t tell me ‘go back to your city…’ It was because I was Latin and he felt he could say that to me.”
She sees the same kind of projecting of hurt and anxiety in trolls online, whether in the comments or in her inbox.
Inspiration Not Comparison
Lucia says if she could give one prompt or mindset shift when people are reconsidering their normal, it would be to flip the script on comparison.
“You are worthy of being seen. You’re worthy of taking up space. You are worthy of being completely different than anyone else in your industry.”
She says that it’s so easy for entrepreneurs to get caught up in comparison and for that to keep them from showing up and being seen and sharing what they want to share.
She says when you are comparing yourself to someone else, “you want to flip that into, how can this person become a muse for my inspiration?”
“You need to forgive the part of yourself that feels like it’s not worthy of being seen, worthy of showing up and taking up space. If you can flip that into a positive, use that as inspiration to fire up your creativity, and lift you up, you’ll be able to create from a much better place.”
Ready to dive deeper?
When reconsidering your understanding and assumptions around identity, it’s so important to be clear on your values, what matters to you, and how you can lead from a place of clarity, understanding and empathy.
From Implicit To Explicit is a masterclass to get clear on what matters to you as a human and how it informs the way you show up professionally.