The Identity Wall: Why We Reject Ideas

Why your self-concept might be your biggest obstacle to growth

My friend Sawyer called me yesterday. He’s an Investment Banker, and sometimes I imagine the contrast between our daily lives.

“Honestly, that sounds like hell,” he said, in response to a job posting I’d sent him.

I was shocked at the response. The company claims to have built in-house software to automate 80%+ of analyst work with AI. They wanted to hire bankers to use it.

When he called I was thinking about my approach to deepening my technical knowledge. I’ve been frustrated, struggling to get pointed in the right direction. We’re talking.

“Really?” I said. I thought back to all the tasks he’s told me about being up till 3 am completing just in time for his 7 am meeting that next day.

Sawyer laughed. “Yeah, I mean it sounds like they want to get more out of me.” He does 5 deals a year, and now that company wanted someone to do 20-30 with their tech.

I kept thinking about his response after we’d hung up.

Sawyer didn’t hear work smarter. He heard work more. Then it hit me when getting back to my own struggle. Sawyer’s imagined issue and my issue were the same.

We weren’t struggling with bandwidth. We were struggling with identity.

Identity Rejects Innovation

Sawyer is an Investment Banker who does 5 deals a year. That’s not a job description. It’s who he is. His entire professional identity is built around that reality.

The prestige.

The rhythm of deals.

The expertise required.

The AI-native job wasn’t asking him to work differently. It was asking him to be someone different and that’s what sounded like hell.

His mind instantly rejected it. The role contradicted, what Prescott Lecky calls, his system of ideas. When we encounter new information, our minds perform an unconscious evaluation: ideas that align with our existing system are accepted as truth, while those that contradict it are automatically rejected, not believed, and not acted on.

The information couldn’t penetrate his imagination.

The Invisible Knowledge Barrier

This wasn’t unique to Sawyer. I was doing the exact same thing with technical knowledge.

I am struggling to absorb technical knowledge because it contradicted who I believe myself to be in my role. “Product person who collaborates with engineering” can’t easily absorb “technical person who builds things.”

The ideas bounce off.

This is the pattern no one talks about. The common diagnosis for our struggle is bandwidth. I need better systems. Better structure. Better organization.

So we optimize.

We build productivity systems.

We see marginal gains.

And this works… Until it doesn’t. Eventually we hit the wall Sawyer bumped into. The wall I hit. The wall where the ideas can’t get through because they threaten who we believe we are.

Ask Your Tomorrow Self

So what do you do when your identity is blocking you from growing?

I’ve spent months trying to force myself to absorb technical knowledge. Then yesterday I stumbled on something stupidly simple. One question.

“What would tomorrow’s me want today’s me to do?”

Not next-year me. Not idealized me. Not even the best version of myself.

The version 24 hours ahead.

When I thought about this, something shifted. Tomorrow’s me just needed to be the product person who understands one technical concept deeper, not a full stack engineer.

The identity threat dissolves.

The question works because it pulls you out of your current identity constraints just enough to create space for new ideas to be absorbed. It creates permissions for your system of ideas to admit gaps. It becomes about who you’re becoming.

If Sawyer asked this question about an AI-native investment bank. It might be exploring how 6-7 deals a year might feel with AI assistance.

The shift is tiny.

But it’s enough to let the information in.

This is how identity actually expands. It’s not through dramatic revelations, or forcing yourself to jump off the cliff without a parachute. Identity changes through microshifts.

Over time, your identity reorganizes itself. The new you emerges from the space you’ve created to grow.

But absorbing ideas isn’t only about expanding your capacity.

It’s about expanding your identity too.