Your Identity Is Limiting You

There are two words you can eliminate from your vocabulary and improve your life: always and never.

Always and never are labels you’re putting on yourself. If I never eat vegetables, how do I start living a healthier life? If I always get bored reading, how do I learn anything new?

The most important conversation you have is the one you’re having with yourself all day long. That inner dialogue is what shapes how you view the world and how you view yourself. It determines how you act and what you think is possible for yourself.

We tend to view things that we’ve struggled to change or don’t want to carry the burden of changing as though they’re set in stone.

The more labels we attach to ourselves, the more options we take off the table. If we’ve spent years telling ourselves we always do this, we never do that - we’re making it harder to improve. We don’t want to contradict ourselves, so we double down on failed strategies.

Lose the Labels

In his iconic essay, Keep Your Identity Small, Paul Graham wrote, “The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.”

We live in a time of showcasing our labels. We do it in the descriptions of our social media profiles, bumper stickers and the brands we wear. We’re telling the world that we’re a part of something.

There’s the vegan, paleo, cat-loving, coexisting English teacher and there’s the conservative, christian, carnivore dieting Cross Fitter.

Community is good for us and our desire for a tribe is primal. But there’s a stark difference between being a part of a community and conforming to a label.

The problem with these labels is that we’re slowly delegating away our responsibility to think for ourselves. We’re socializing our beliefs. We join a political party and now our decisions about politics are made for us – we’re for this and we’re against that.

It’s not a mistake that the issues most discussed during a presidential campaign – abortion, guns, taxes – are all things a president actually has little control over. Campaigns are run based on the issues most tied to a political party’s identity. Regardless of how realistic a president having any impact on them is.

Think for Yourself

Don’t hesitate to change your mind or your way of thinking when presented with new information. Strive for thoughtful opinions held loosely.

Emperor Marcus Aurelius was viewed as a god by the Romans. He was the most powerful man in the world. What he said went. But he was still willing to learn. Willing to change his mind. “If anyone can refute me, show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things form the wrong perspective, I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after,” he wrote in Meditations.

Keep your identity small and build it based on things that matter. The word identity comes from the Latin words essentitas, which means being, and identidem, which means repeatedly. Your identity is what you repeatedly do, it’s not the labels you attach to yourself.

To improve your quality of life – watch how you talk to yourself. Question all assumptions you put on yourself. Nothing is set in stone. Don’t keep making mistakes or repeating behaviors that aren’t serving you. Honestly evaluate why you do the things you do and cut the fat.