What Is Identity?
Identity is how your essence and purpose become legible — to yourself and to other people. It comes last in the sequence because identity built before essence is a performance you have to sustain, while identity built after essence is simply an accurate description you can defend without effort.
The cost of identity-first
When identity leads, every decision is filtered through whether it fits the story. That filter quietly removes exactly the experiments that would tell you something new.
Identity as infrastructure
A well-built identity reduces friction: it tells other people what to bring you, and it tells you what to decline. That is an infrastructural function, not a branding exercise.