Understanding Your Identity

If you were at a football game, what activities would you be engaged in?  Your answers may include watching the game, calling the plays, running with the ball, refereeing, or even shaking your pom-poms.  The answer you give depends on how you see yourself — your identity.

Identity is far more than your name or address.  It includes your roles, beliefs, traits, and many other components.  Think of it as the title of the internal story you tell yourself about yourself.  Your thoughts, behaviors, and patterns are shaped by your identity.

Most people craft their identity without much thought, following family or cultural expectations.  They may adopt labels or behaviors others project onto them.  But you define and craft your own identity.  From childhood onward, you can either absorb what others say you are or actively reject it.  You decide what is in and what is out.

Which comes first: identity or behavior?  You can “fake it until you make it,” but lasting change happens when identity is the target.  Once your identity shifts, new habits naturally align with the person you believe yourself to be.  Pick the characteristics you want to include.  Maybe you admire someone you know, so borrow the traits you respect and practice them until they feel authentic.  You can also keep aspects of your old identity that have served you well.

Trying to adopt a habit that does not fit your identity rarely lasts.  This is why many New Year’s resolutions fail; they change behavior but not identity.  For example, if your identity says, “I am weak and scrawny,” and you want to lift weights and get strong, that habit likely will not stick.  Instead, modify your identity to be: “I am getting stronger.”  A person who sees themselves this way naturally lifts weights.  Your new identity must be grounded in truth — you cannot convincingly claim, “I am strong and powerful” if you clearly are not, but you can say, “I am getting stronger and more powerful.”

Sometimes people lose their identity due to injury, divorce, or addiction.  This is not a setback — it’s an opportunity to build a new identity from scratch.  Often, starting fresh is easier than trying to repair an old identity that no longer serves you.

When you embrace a new identity, also consider changing your name.  In the Bible, God gives new names when giving new identities: Abram became Abraham, Jacob became Israel. Weddings also create new identities deserving new names.  How cool it would be if both husbands and wives took on new family names!  If changing your name is not appealing, consider using a previously unused or rarely used middle name.  Your new identity deserves a new name, because you are a new person.