What is your Identity? Not your color or your occupation or your name or your education or your background or your main role in life. You are not really any of those, at least you don’t have to be if you don’t want to be.
Rather, what is your INTERNAL identity? Or, put another way, who do YOU think you are? What is your Self-Concept? What do you think you are capable of? And where did you pick up those beliefs? And to what extent are they factual? Objective truths v. Subjective truths?
I’m a self-labeled introvert yet I consider that a “subjective truth” in that is true mainly because I choose to hold certain beliefs and behave a certain way, generally choosing a good book over a party. Yet I do have an internal extrovert that I can and do call upon on occasion and in past periods of my life, I’ve been much more extroverted and thus think of where I am on the introvert/extrovert scale as much as a choice as aught else, at most a tendency rather than a destiny. I also think of myself as a resilient, positive can-do optimist and yet I also know that this is an identity I’ve carefully cultivated and reinforced over the years.
The point is that few try what they think they can’t do or be good at, yet in large measure, what we think we can do is greatly impacted by who we think we are i.e. our identity, our concept of our self. Thus, identity can become our destiny… at least as long as we turn a blind eye to the extent of our ability to nudge, impact, and craft our identity.
You may not be able to do a 180 degree turn on a particular trait but you can for sure move the needle.
Think you can, think you can’t, you are right… and often far more than it is comfortable to acknowledge.
Closing Quotes:
“It’s impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.” – Orson Scott Card
“The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity.” – James Clear, ‘Atomic Habits’
“If you want to learn how to commit to your goals in the long term, you have to develop an identity that drives the behaviors you need to achieve them.” – Samuel Thomas Davies
As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier