There are certain times in your life—when you get to choose who you want to be from that day forward. For example, the new year and birthdays are times when you can rebirth yourself by taking on a new identity.
For example, when you celebrate a birthday, you might say, “Oh, another year passed, and I’m another year older. I don’t have the time to create the things I want to create in my life.”
Instead, you could see your birthday as an opportunity to choose who to be for the next 12 months…or years. You could tell yourself, “This year, I choose to be ____.” Fill in the gap with a descriptive word, like happy, carefree, a writer, an artist, the owner of a brand new business, or healthy.
A new identity helps you take the necessary actions to create what matters to you. So, choose who to be, and you will move toward your goals and visions much more quickly from that point.
A New Identity for a New Age
So, why am I writing about this now? Because as I write this post, I am about to celebrate my birthday. And I’ve been thinking about who I want to be this coming year and for the next 20 or 30 years. (Of course, I could choose to be someone else next year or in five or ten years.) I know who I’ve been for the last 63 years. However, my identity is not fixed, and I am choosing a new identity as I enter my 64th year of life.
Lifecycle events are superb times to consider who you have been and want to become. When I turned 50, I had two ceremonies for this milestone birthday. During one, I took on a new Hebrew name to symbolize my transformation into a new identity.
While birthdays provide opportunities to change your identity, you can do so on any day of the year. But since choosing to be someone different is like a rebirth, birthdays seem like the perfect time to bite yourself anew.
When you shift your identity, you become a different person, and as a result, you achieve different results. So, if you have dreams and goals to accomplish in the next year…or the next 5, 10, or 20 years, you need to be the type of person who can take the actions to bring them into reality.
Opportunities to Change Who You Are Being
Life sometimes gives you different opportunities to change who you are being. For instance, a move is an excellent chance to clean the slate and start over.
My husband and I decided to move to a new state when my stepson was either a junior or a senior in high school. I didn’t think he’d want to be uprooted from his school and friends at that age, but he did. He told us, “I’m going to go to a new place where nobody knows me. I can start from scratch and be whoever I want to be.”
Indeed, the people who know you have preconceived notions about your identity based on their past experiences of you. It can be challenging to get them to recognize when you change your way of being.
Go somewhere new, though, and no one has any past experiences of you. Therefore, they will form their opinions based on the identity you present to them.
Someone else close to me is about to make a big move and career change. This person can leave everything from the past in the past and start with a clean slate, too.
Imagine that you can start with a clean slate. What difference would it make to rebirth yourself and create a new identity that allows people to see you differently? What identity would you adopt?
Identity Helps You Achieve Your Goals and Realize Your Dreams
You might also need a new identity to achieve your goals and realize your dreams. What identity would help you do that?
I discuss identity with my Certified High Performance and Transformational Coaching clients. The reason is simple: When you change who you are being, you change your habits, beliefs, and ways of behaving. Therefore, you change your ability to get the results you desire.
During a group coaching session for the Inspired Creator Community, one of the members shared how she stopped smoking by changing her identity. As soon as she decided to be a non-smoker, she never smoked again.
This Inspired Creator Community member hadn’t realized previously that the identity change was the key to changing her smoking habit. She came to the next coaching session—a week later—and shared, “After last week’s session, I decided I was no longer a person who drank Diet Pepsi. And I haven’t had a Diet Pepsi since. The habit is gone.”
While those examples demonstrate how a change in identity can eliminate habits, your identity can also help you develop new ones. For instance, if you choose to be someone healthy and fit, when you see junk food, you won’t eat it. And you won’t avoid the gym. Why? Because that’s who you are. You’re somebody who is healthy and fit, and someone with that identity prioritizes eating nutritious food and working out.
Actions Depend on Identity
Your actions align with your identity. So, be someone who can take the actions that allow you to create what matters to you.
For example, let’s say you value learning. Then, you could choose to be a lifelong learner. A person with that identity would take courses, read, and watch educational television shows.
You can choose an identity by first creating your vision for the future. Let’s say it’s the New Year, and your goal is to write a book in the next 12 months. Who must you be—what identity must you adopt—to achieve that goal? What type of person takes the actions to make that vision a reality?
Maybe the identity is “writer.’ Or perhaps you need to be an “author.” Possibly, you need to be “committed” or “courageous.” These identities will help you take the actions necessary to achieve your goal.
But don’t say, “I will be an author when I write and publish a book.” You must be that person now. Be a writer. Be an author. Be committed and courageous…NOW. When you adopt that identity, you will develop the mindsets and habits necessary to realize your dream. You will do the things a person with those characteristics—that identity—would do to achieve their goal of being an author.
It may not be your birthday (or a new year), but you have opportunities daily to choose a new identity. You can decide to be someone new—to rebirth yourself—right now because you read this blog post.
Indeed, I hope this blog post inspires you to say, “Today is the day that I intentionally choose who I am so I can create what really matters to me.”
Who do you choose to be in this moment? Please tell me in a comment below, and share this post with someone who might benefit from reading it.
Photo courtesy of yurolaitsalbert.
