The Mask You Wear and Your Life Challenge

Mask by Amanda Banfield/Vice

We all wear them, the mask we show the world.  Did you know that this mask also holds the secret of your life challenge?   It also holds our call, our soul's call, the thing we are here to do with our lives.  In my book, Second Act Soul Calls I talk about calling as related to vocation, that is, the work we are here to do, but calling also refers to what kind of person we are and the mask we wear holds the secret of what kind of person that is.  It also holds the secret of what we are challenged to be and do in the world.  We then can take that and use it in a vocational way or we can simply be that kind of person no matter what vocation we choose. I call this our core issue or core challenge and it comes in many varieties.  Joseph Campbell called it, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, the name of his famous book.  

I see and experienced many of these faces in my work as a coach and therapist.  Maybe it's the face of the conventional hero - the person who always saves the day and does the heroic thing.  Or it could be the face of the angel, the sweet and always accommodating people pleaser.   For some it's the face of a dominant and arrogant individual.  For others the face shows itself as aloof and unfeeling.  Some wear the face of the clown or jester - always making light of things and bringing humor into the situation.  Some are just plain sour and sarcastic, while others are control freaks and always want things their way or they are unflappable people who never get ruffled or out of sorts.

What Face/Mask Do You Wear?

The key to knowing what your soul is calling you to do is and to identify your core challenge is to look at and discover both the external face or mask you show the world and the face that is hidden behind that mask.  Jung called this your shadow.  The shadow is the dark side of your personality.  It's the part you don't want to show and it's the part that needs to be incorporated into the face you show the world, so that you are showing an authentic self and not a mask.  Your first task in discovering your life challenge is to identify the mask you wear and show the public.  The second task is to identify the lie the mask covers, because the mask always hides something and that something is part of the truth of you.

The face/mask we wear always has an aspect of the lie in it - no one can always be the hero, no one can please everyone, all the time, no one is a total victim, or legitimately angry all the time, or in control of everything and life is not always fun and jokes have their place but not in every situation.  Carolyn Myss has also identified many different masks in her book, Sacred Contracts, an interesting and provocative book. What I am calling your core challenge or the face you wear, Myss calls your archetypal pattern. According to the listing on Amazon, "In coming to know your archetypal companions, you also begin to see how to live your life in ways that make the best use of your personal power and lead you to fulfill your greatest - in fact, your divine - potential."  My own work is about the same thing but I like to give people some shorthand ways to get at what Myss, Campbell and Jung have said.  Below are some ways to identify both the face you wear and its shadow.  For a list of archetypes and an explanation of them use this link:  http://www.myss.com/library/contracts/three_archs.asp.

Look For Archetypes 

In order to know your core challenge and therefore the direction your soul wants you to take in life you must first identify what face you wear.  You can use the list or link above or ask your friends and significant others to play a little game with you.  Ask then how they see you and ask also that they not get into an assessment or judgement of this or how it affects them.  Also, ask them if you can do this with them.  The idea is to identify but not try to fix or get feedback of why this is a good or bad thing.  If this feels too threatening then simply do it on your own.  By the way, it's the consistency of the face you normally wear and not an occasional one that shows up that you are looking to identify.  I knew a woman once whose consistent face was that of the professor - all knowing and yet all evaluating - she was pleasant but always seemed to have a red pen in her hand ready to mark up other people's lives with corrections and a list of what was wrong and what needed to be fixed, but like a real professor it was never about her - at least not until the end of the semester when the students got to evaluate her - she was indeed a real professor.  But in her personal life, there was no end of the semester evaluations.  In fact, she was not only not open to being evaluated, she resisted any feedback anyone gave her by saying, "I don't know about that, but..." and would go back to whoever or whatever she was evaluating.

The Flip Side is Your Shadow 

Once you have identified the face/mask you wear then you want to see what's hidden behind that face since all of the faces we wear have a flip side or what Jung called our shadow. The professor had trouble enjoying life because she was too busy finding fault with it.  She also was unable to take in feedback about her own life and what she might need to change, fix or see in order to fulfill her divine potential.  Instead of being someone who had knowledge to share or simply someone who knew things but did not have a need to force this knowledge on to others, she became instead someone very few people wanted to be around and when she retired and no longer had an official job teaching and evaluating others, she became a very unhappy camper.

Now Identify Your Core Life Challenge 

Your core life challenge is connected to the consistent face you show the world and its flip side, your shadow.  As you look at these two things, you may have a sudden aha! moment about this and see why and how certain things have been true for you over the years.  Or it may take some time to come to light for you since denial is a big part of being human and many of us simply do not want to see or acknowledge the dark side of ourselves.  Again, you might ask those friends and significant others - but be kind to yourself and make sure they are kind as well.  We won't be able to see this side of ourselves if it comes with harsh judgement and much blame.  But your core life challenge and your core potential is in there.  Keep looking and you will find it and if you have trouble with this give me a call - I love working with people on finding their core challenge and therefore their potential in the world.

Blessings, Lorraine