What if some of the things you believe about yourself are simply untrue?
I mean that quite literally. Consider the sentences many of us carry as settled fact: I am lazy. I am terrible with money. I am too sensitive. I am bad at relationships. I am undisciplined. I am someone who cannot follow through. I am too much, or not enough.
Most of us keep a long list of these "I am" statements. Shy. Awkward. Not athletic, not creative, not good with people. Too emotional. A procrastinator. Simply an anxious person. Someone who does not take risks. We rarely hold such statements as hypotheses. We state them the way we state that the sky is blue or that water is wet. I am bad at math. Case closed.
Yet none of us was born knowing these things about ourselves. At some point, we learned them. In this post, I would like to invite you into some curiosity about where. There are three places in particular where our ideas about who we are tend to originate: what we have told ourselves, what other people have told us, and what the larger systems around us have taught us.
What We Have Told Ourselves
Sometimes no one else needs to say anything at all. We reach our own conclusions. We try something and it goes poorly, perhaps several times. Something seems to come easily to everyone around us and not to us. We make a decision we come to regret, or we struggle with something for years. Somewhere along the way, a thing that happened becomes a thing we are.
Consider the difference within each of these pairs:
"I've had trouble sticking with an exercise routine" and "I'm lazy."
"I've made some financial decisions I regret" and "I'm terrible with money."
"I get overwhelmed in large groups" and "I'm socially awkward."
The first statement in each pair describes an experience. The second has hardened into an identity. Once that happens, we begin to collect evidence for it. Of course I didn't finish that; I never finish anything. Of course I didn't speak up; I'm shy. Of course I couldn't do that; I'm not brave. Before long, we have stopped asking whether the conclusion is true. It has simply become who we are.
Perhaps it is not, or not entirely.
What Others Have Told Us
Some of our identities arrive from other people. Occasionally the delivery is direct: "You're too sensitive." "You're the difficult one." "You're the smart one." "You're the irresponsible one." "You've always been bad at math." "You just aren't a people person."
More often, no one says it quite so plainly. A family story gathers around us. We become the quiet child, the wild one, the dramatic one, the good one, the responsible one. A teacher makes an offhand remark when we are nine years old. Someone we loved says something about us in the heat of an argument twenty years ago. A person with authority in our lives forms an opinion about who we are, and we believe them.
I find this the most striking part. People can be entirely sincere in their view of us and still be mistaken. They see us through their own experiences, fears, expectations, and limitations, and through their own sense of what is possible. We can spend years living inside someone else's interpretation of us.
So when you hear yourself say, "I'm just the kind of person who...," it is worth asking whose voice that is. Is it actually yours?
What the Larger Systems Have Taught Us
Beyond individuals lie the larger influences: family, culture, society, religion, gender, age, body size, race, class, and education. Every system and community we have lived inside holds ideas about what certain kinds of people are like, and what they are supposed to be like.
What does it mean to be a "good" woman? A good man? A good mother, or a good partner? A successful person? A spiritual person? A person in their fifties, sixties, or seventies? What does your culture say that someone in your body is capable of? What did your religion teach you about which parts of yourself were acceptable? What did your family teach you about ambition, money, rest, sex, anger, achievement, wanting things, and taking up space?
Some of what we call personality may be adaptation. Some of what we call limitation may be rules we absorbed so early that we forgot they were rules. And some of what we believe we are permitted to want may have been decided on our behalf, a very long time ago.
A Practice of Noticing
You do not need to replace every negative belief with a positive affirmation. Nobody is obliged to stand before the mirror tomorrow morning and proclaim themselves a fearless, unstoppable money magnet, although you are welcome to, should the idea appeal. A smaller practice is on offer here, and I find it considerably more interesting: begin to notice.
Listen for your "I am" statements. I'm lazy. I'm too old. I'm not good at that. I'm not disciplined. I'm bad with technology. I'm too sensitive. I'm just not that kind of person. When you catch one, pause and ask yourself:
Is that actually true?
How do I know?
Where did I learn it?
Is this something I know about myself, or something I have repeated so many times that it feels true?
Did someone else give me this idea: my family, my culture, my religion, an old relationship, an experience from twenty years ago?
Who might I be without this conclusion?
There is no need to answer quickly, and I would gently encourage you not to. For now, simply make a little room around the certainty. One way to begin is to alter the grammar:
Instead of "I'm not creative," try "I have believed for a long time that I'm not creative."
Instead of "I'm terrible with money," try "I have a story about myself that says I'm terrible with money."
Instead of "I'm not brave," try "I wonder where I learned that I'm not brave."
Each revised sentence says something quite different from the original.
A Different Question
The moment we can see a story as a story, we can ask whether we still wish to live inside it.
If you begin to question what you have always assumed you are, another question will eventually surface: if I am not necessarily all of that, then who am I? It is a tender question, and it does not need an answer today.
For now, I invite you to listen to yourself this week with gentleness and curiosity, and to perhaps hold your certainties a little more loosely.