Tony Robbins -Re-Awaken_the_Giant_Within

hair— causes them to dread their approaching years and the new, less desirable identity that they expect
to experience with it. Thus, in a desperate effort to maintain their identity, they do things to prove they’re
still young: buy fast cars, change their hairstyles, divorce their spouses, change jobs.
If these people had a solid grasp of their true identities, would they experience this crisis at all? I suspect
not. Having an identity that is specifically linked to your age or how you look would definitely set you
up for pain because these things will change. If we have a broader sense of who we are, our identity
never becomes threatened.
Even businesses can have identity crises. Years ago, photocopying giant Xerox Corporation underwent
an interesting shift in its image. When personal computing emerged as “the wave of the future,” Xerox
wanted to use their technological power to enter this exciting new market. They put their research and
development staff on it and, after spending approximately $2 billion, they came up with a number of
innovative advances, including the precursor to what we now know as a mouse.
Why, then, isn’t Xerox in the competitive computer race, running neck and neck with Apple and IBM?
One reason surely is that in the beginning, its identity didn’t really allow for the company to head in
this direction. Even its “graphic” identity, which used to rely on ads with a roly-poly monk, confined
its capacity to be identified as the epitome of cutting-edge computing technology. While the monk
symbolized the exacting nature of manuscript copying, he was hardly appropriate for this new venture
into high technology, where speed was one of the most highly valued criteria. On the consumer side, the
identity Xerox had established as the world’s leading copier company did not instill a high confidence in
the company’s efforts to market computers. Compound this with a graphic identity that had little to do with
how to process information rapidly, and you begin to see where some of Xerox’s problems originated.
Marketing and graphic-design experts alike will tell you that corporate image is a huge filter through
which consumers process buying information—they must know who you are, what you stand for,
and when they’re investing large sums of money, they usually want to buy from a company that
exemplifies their product. As Xerox grappled with incorporating this facet of computerization into its
existing identity, other companies zoomed to the forefront, overtaking the marketplace. At this point,
Xerox decided that, rather than try to change its identity, it would utilize it. It would computerize its
photocopiers and concentrate its R&D dollars on improving what it already knew how to do best.
That’s when Xerox began the process of transformation by producing new “Xerox images”—airing
commercials featuring fast-paced imagery of plotters, hardware, software, communication networks—
and completing the visual message with the words, “Xerox…the Document Company.” This expanded
identity must be conditioned within the culture for Xerox to expand its market, and it is using every
opportunity to do so.
It doesn’t take a crisis for most of us to understand that we can change our behavior, but the prospect
of changing our identity seems threatening or impossible to most. Breaking away from our core beliefs
about who we are gives us the most intense pain, and some people would even go so far as to kill
themselves to preserve those beliefs. This was dramatically illustrated in Victor Hugo’s masterpiece
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