Identity: Your Passport to Success

Introduction 1
The connection between knowing who you are and success • How to think of your identity as your personal brand • The greatest gift somebody can get as a human being • If you don’t have a strong identity, you don’t have a choice

Chapter 1: You Have a Choice 7
Living with a race-based consciousness • The first step to freedom • Why you need a process for becoming successful • Getting the gift of choice • Taking a deep, hard look at yourself

Chapter 2: Knowing Yourself Should Be Easy. It Isn’t. Why Is That? 23
Are you letting everybody but you decide who you are or should be? • Who do you see when you look in the mirror? • Write a ten-word want ad for yourself • How to become more attractive to others

Chapter 3: What Do Your Personal Values Have to Do with Your Identity? 41
The correlation between your identity and how people relate to you • Why growing up disadvantaged can give you strength • Being different can make you more interesting • How a willingness to change makes you gifted and successful

Chapter 4: Can Your Attitude Affect Identity? 61
Why it’s your decision to be who you are • From college drop-out to #1 entrepreneur under 30 • mophie, kluster, and quirky--Profile in Success

Chapter 5: Can People’s Identity Change? 73
To be successful in any of the roles you take on in your life, you have to fill the role with the spirit of your real self, your passion, and your values • Steve Jobs--Profile in Success • Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice

Chapter 6: Do You Transform Your Own Identity? Or Is It Owning Your Identity That Transforms Your Life? 99
How you always have options and sometimes don’t know it • What matters to you can change over time • How your identity evolves • Why when you bring value to the world around you, you feel good about yourself--you feel successful

Chapter 7: When Identity Must Deal with a Life Crisis 123
Whether change is planned or unplanned, there’s always opportunity for you to prepare for it • How to identify the values that bring out the best in you and live by them • Why, when you are not moving forward, you’re not even standing still; you’re really going backward

Chapter 8: Friendship, Teamwork, and Your Identity 143
Why you will find it’s good for you to be around people who have the same values as you • If you have a dream, you need a team • How the people with whom you connect as you strive toward your success can help you, or can get in your way

Chapter 9: Persistence and Your Identity 157
Come to think of yourself as a work of art in progress • Body by Jake--Profile in Success of a fitness guru • Why you’ve got to have mentors to hang out with who are winners • What to do when people bet against you • How it’s about being loyal to your values and your vision

Chapter 10: Adjustments and Tune-ups for Your Identity 169
The Wizard of Oz and You • Why the successful person makes a habit of doing what the failing person doesn’t like to do • How it happens that as you become clear about who you are and show it to the world, opportunities for success will start to find you

Chapter 11: Bringing It All Together--Committing to Your Vision 185
The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating--in work, in play, in love • Lessons in success and transformation from a North Vietnam prisoner-of-war camp • Your Nine-Step Success Process

Afterword by Stephen R. Covey 199