Why I Wear a Suit Every Day: A Story of Vulnerability

Those in close proximity can attest to the fact that I wear a suit every day to work. I would imagine they have often wondered, why does Norlan wear a suit every day? (For those whom I have yet to have the pleasure of meeting in person, please see my LinkedIn profile picture. Yes, that is how I look every day.)

It was Dr. Brené Brown’s book, Daring Greatly, that called me towards a journey of vulnerability through honest self-reflection and a deeper sense of self-awareness. And it was this honest self-reflection and this deeper sense of self-awareness that permitted me to acknowledge the intersectionality of my identities and its influence on my behavior.

The Perfectionist

Hello, my name is Norlan Hernández, I am a perfectionist. This truth did not come to me through reading Daring Greatly and engaging in self-reflection alone but was further affirmed by the results of the Enneagram test taken through The Enneagram Institute (enneagraminstitute.com), which was formed by Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson in 1997, though the Enneagram itself has been around for much, much longer. For those who don’t know, the Enneagram is a typology of nine interconnected personality types, “one of which we naturally gravitate toward and adopt in childhood to cope and feel safe” (Cron, Stabile, 2016). Regarding the Type 1 – The Perfectionist, Cron and Stabile (2016) write, “They chase perfection because they have this vague, unsettling feeling that if they make a mistake someone is going to jump out to blame them, criticize, or punish them.” My fear has been any criticism that highlights any shade of incompetence.

Dr. Brown (2012) posits that we build an understanding of our self-worth based on how we were raised or how we approach the world, sometimes taking the form of attaching self-worth and value to how the work of our hands are received. I assigned value and self-worth to the way people received my professional presentation and the work I did. The way I looked had to be perfect, hence the suit, and the work I did had to be perfect, hence the personality trait of a perfectionist.

Wearing a suit every day to work has been my strategic attempt to dress my insecurities in a professional attire that reflects nothing short of professionalism, competence, and perfection. That is God’s honest truth.

Intersectionality of Identity

Those insecurities were conceived out of the cultural and ethnic context of my upbringing. For example, neither of my parents have the equivalency of a high school degree, I am the only one in my immediate family that was born in the U.S., I am a first-generation college student, and am the first in my family to ever work in higher education. These historical facts have influenced the mannerism with which I navigate professional settings, the language I use within and outside of the workplace, and the perception of my personal biases regarding my own identity, sometimes leading to rejecting it and conforming to the dominant cultural mold. Jaspas and Cinnirella (2012) argue that a perceived negativity of belonging to a particular group can cause adverse implications for a person’s self-esteem. This was a repulsive reality I had to face. I had accepted negative views and perceptions that were assigned to those that looked and talked like me. I had left no room for the positive factors of my cultural and ethnic identity.

The insights Fisher-Borne, Cain, and Martin (2015) offered helped me combat the adverse implications of my personal biases of my in-group by proposing that individuals should be understood as “whole and complex” and insisting that the tool to do so is by acknowledging the intersectionality of identities, which “disrupts the idea of social identities (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, etc.) operating in isolation.” Furthermore, Dr. Brown (2012) warns us that if we “want freedom from perfectionism, we have to make the long journey from ‘What will people think?’ to ‘I am enough'”.

It took some time but I now understand that I am more than the perception of my social identity. I am whole and complex, which includes being a U.S. citizen with proud Nicaragüense roots. I am a Master’s degree holder on his way to a Doctorate degree. I am a professional with particular experiences, skills, and talents. I am a husband, father, son, and brother. I am a leader with the intersectionality of all of these great descriptors.

So, where am I now? Well, the journey towards vulnerability through self-reflection and self-awareness has shed light on the unhealthy aspects of my strive towards perfectionism. Although I still desire perfectionism in my work and my appearance, it is no longer with the end goal of receiving other’s affirmation for the sake of my own sense of worth. I now seek perfectionism with a healthy sense of attempting to perform to the best of my God-given abilities and talents. I am now much more comfortable walking in my skin regardless of the setting I find myself in. I am much more confident regarding what I can contribute to given the value of the intersectionality of my identity.

Hello, my name is Norlan Hernández. I wear a suit every day to work because I want to.

References

Brown, Brené. (2012). Daring greatly. New York, NY: Avery.

Cron, Ian Morgan, and Stabile, Susanne. (2016). The road back to you: An Enneagram journey to self-discovery. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Fisher-Borne, M., Cain, J. M., & Martin, S. L. (2015). From mastery to accountability: Cultural humility as an alternative to cultural competence. Social Work Education, 34(2), 165-181.

Jaspal, R., & Cinnirella, M. (2012). The construction of ethnic identity: Insights from identity process theory. Ethnicities, 12(6), 503–530.