“Decide who you want to be. Act that way. In time, you’ll become the person you resolve to be.” -Eric Greitens
What type of person are you? What type of person do you want to be? Are you a father or mother? Are you strong and healthy? Are you weak and inactive? These are crucial questions, because who we are, our identity, influences the actions we take. And the actions we take influence who we become.
If my identity is that I’m weak, inactive, and unhealthy, then am I going to go to the gym 5 days a week? Probably not, because I view myself as lazy and inactive. Going to the gym isn’t what a lazy and inactive person does. Flip the coin over and we realize the opposite is true. If my identity is that I’m strong, active, and healthy, then going to the gym 5 days a week is easier. I’ll go because it’s something that someone who is strong, active, and healthy does. My identity and the actions I take are in congruence with each other.
Maybe I smoke a pack of cigarettes a day and believe I’m a smoker. I’m going to be fighting an uphill battle when trying to quit smoking then, because it’s part of my identity. Smoking is what a smoker does, therefore, if I believe I’m a smoker, then I’m going to smoke. If though, I decide upon a new identity of someone that doesn’t smoke, then I stand a chance. Because now when I think of smoking it’s something the old me did, the smoker, not the new me.
This is part of why a lot of people, and maybe you can relate, have started exercising or eating better for a bit, but inevitably fall off the wagon. The issue may not have been that you couldn’t achieve that goal, but that you didn’t see yourself as the person that could. Your actions didn’t match up with the person you believed you were.
Put another way, James Clear has said:
“Behavior that is incongruent with the self will not last.”
This could be viewed in a negative light or a positive light, depending on your mindset. Viewed in a negative light we see identity change as impossible because we think, “I’ll never be healthy because I’m lazy. This is who I am, I can’t change.” We give ourselves an excuse. A way out.
It’s easy to make excuses. To accept the status quo and believe that you can’t change. That who you are now is who you’ll always be. “I’m unhealthy because I’m lazy,” we tell ourselves. We set ourselves up for failure because of this limiting belief that we can’t change. It’s simply not true though. Change is hard, sure, but it’s possible if we’re willing to work at it.
This idea is simple and easy to understand. Simple, but not easy. Changing who we are, in a fundamental way, is tough and takes hard work. Otherwise, many of us would have been much more successful in the past with our goals.
But we don’t have to view identity change as an impossibility, because we can see it as an opportunity. If I want to change my behavior, then who I am must change too.
Do you want to be strong? Then act in ways that someone who was strong would. Want to be be a hiker? Then hike. Want to be a better father or mother? Then act in ways that shape you into a better father or mother. Now, I realize this all might feel foreign at first, because it’s new, and that’s okay.
When we try to change our identity and become someone we’re currently not, we may feel resistance. We may feel that we’re not being real or not being ourselves. It’s because, well, we’re not, technically. We’re acting in ways that will change us into someone else. That’s okay.
We’re becoming someone who can get us where we want to go. Acting in ways that shape us into the type of person we want to be. This feeling will subside in time as we become that person we want to become. Then it won’t feel fake because once our identity has changed, and those actions are just things this new us does.
Maybe all this identity talk seems a little scary to you. Maybe you’re thinking, “but I’m not this active person who goes to the gym, it’s too hard.” And maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re not that type of person…yet.
But you can be.
This is simple, but not easy. So, are you going to take this information in and do nothing with it? Or, will you take it, ask the hard questions, answer them, and act in ways that are in line with the person you want to be? To quote Eric Greitens again,
“Decide who you want to be. Act that way. In time, you’ll become the person you resolve to be.”
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