Free Oneself from Chatter

Like it or not, we have multiple personas.  It is the appropriate thing to do, to have our persona at school, at work; our persona in front of our parents, our friends, our partners.  The most genuine kind will keep personas to a minimum.  The lucky ones will have their one and only persona.  I myself cannot handle too many, it is a matter of competency... 

We need personas out of necessity, we want to be the best for the people we love and for our society.  Sometimes we get lost, that is when our personas takeover our decisions in life, we live according to these "roles" and what is expected of them.  

I am a workaholic and am naturally obsessed with the topic of career/ vocation in the modern world, what "work" has done to our lives.  Life/ work is an eternal topic for me and my friends, majority of us are very much defined by what we do as a professional, but we are also curious about what we are capable of beyond that dominant persona.  Yet, we just do not have the time - it is a luxury - we cannot afford to - life is not so bad right now - I have many responsibilities etc.  We know. 

We are buried by our personas, it takes time to unbury things.  On top of that, we are not the most rational beings and very much affected by the fallacy of sunk cost.  We fall back on our status quo because of all the investments we made in the past, those are investments that we could build on and investments that yield.

Just when my head was wandering in this space, I came across an interview of Sandra Oh - the first Asian American (or Canadian?) who got nominated for Emmys Lead Actress in a Drama Series.  Something she said about acting and success resonated with me,

"If you choose to step into that persona (of fame), I think it's harder to get back to your base level to create from an authentic place. [...] It takes a long time to free oneself from chatter - goals, social media, image, persona.  And if you are able to move through in that way, you can actually start trying to create from a different place." 

It takes effort to free oneself from chatter, but it could be very rewarding to "start trying to create from a different place".