The Identity Building Blog: Find Your Way Forward!
By Mike Boyes, PhD
This blog focusses on Identity Building. If Identity Building is more a process than a thing (have you heard that before …?), then getting tips, hints, suggestions, or insights into things that can help, hinder or otherwise influence your Identity Building would be valuable, right? That is what I try and do with my entries into this blog. The blog includes my thoughts but is also build respecting my commitment, as a psychologist, to research-based ideas, concepts, and theories. A part of valuing research supported findings, suggestions and ideas about Identity Building involves respecting those people who did the research work to help clarify our views of Identity Building and to sort crap and unsupported opinions out from research supported, Identity Building theories, concepts, and tidbits.
I will also, from time to time, introduce you to people who are doing work that might be of interest to you and of use to you in your Identity Building work. BuldingYourIdeneity.com need not, and should not, be the only place you look for your Identity Building information, tips and strategies, though it is a GREAT place to start and to come back to from time to time. As I have already said, I value and will recommend the work of other people who have paid their research dues and who are talking about aspects of Identity Building that are supported by current research. Of course, YOU will need to go and look at the people, sites and apps I blog about to see what they seem like to you (that’s a big part of my statement that Whatever You Do, Do it on Purpose).
One way to get a feel for what a blog will include is look at the categories the blogger has set up to organize their posts. The categories I am starting with are:
Identity Building Approaches (Diffused, Informational, Normative)
Identity Building Areas (Education-training-job-or-career-planning, Politics, Relationships, Social Issues, Spirituality)
Identity Building Challenges (Anxiety, Stress, Uncertainty)
Identity Building Assess (Self-Reflection, Possibility Seeking)
But the categories do not cover it all or help you find posts of specific interest or relevance to you. That is why each blog entry is tagged with key words that generally describe what the post includes. You can search the growing store of Identity Building blog entries using the Search Bar by entering a word or words that describe things you would like to know more about. You can also look at the tag cloud which provides information about the tags I have used and in which larger words reflect tags I have sued more often. Alternatively, you can look through the list of categories (noted above) that appears on the right side of the blog page and click on a category or sub-category that you think might be of interest to you and you will be shown the blog entries I placed in those categories or sub-categories.
Basically, look around! Be curious! Follow things that are of interest to you! That’s a great way to approach both blog exploration AND Identity Building! Looking for some Identity Building related thing you can’t find in your blog search? Use the contact links to send Mike and email and he will see what he or the site or other sources have that address your question(s).
This blog is built by Mike Boyes, PhD (yes, he is the guy in all the video’s on BuildingYourIdentity.com), a developmental psychologist who has spent 40+ years doing research on, thinking about, teaching about and talking with students who are up to their eyeballs working on Identity Building and Identity Development. Mike took the lead in building this site and, unless otherwise noted, is the primary author of the posts on this blog. If you have any questions about Identity Building in general or about your own Identity Building efforts, you can email them to Mike using the Contact link below or you can go back to the blog page and dive in to see what you can find there than might be of interest or of assistance.