Habits Form Your Identity, and Your Identity is Always Changeable

As James Clear explains in his book Atomic Habits, “Your identity emerges out of your habits.”

This is because habits provide most of the evidence to support who you are.

For example, if you are someone who has reached your goal weight, but you are struggling to identify as a healthy, thin person who no longer overeats, then planning your meals at least 24 hours in advance, and following that plan not only gets you the results you truly desire, but also most importantly, teaches you to trust yourself.

Each day that you plan your meals and eat only what is on your plan, you build evidence towards your new identity as someone who eats only what her body needs for nourishment.

James Clear shares, “New identities require new evidence. If nothing changes, nothing is going to change.”

Your beliefs about you are a choice.

You may have chosen some of your beliefs consciously, but as is the case for most, many of your beliefs were chosen unconsciously.

Your identity isn’t something you’re born with that is unalterable.

You can choose to change your identity at any time.

You don’t need anyone’s permission about what to believe—you can believe anything you want to believe.

If you fear this means you are being delusional, the truth is, we are all already functioning without certainty about our lives.

What I mean by this is we plan summer vacations in January, but we don’t know if we will be healthy and well in August in order to go on vacation.

Or, we begin saving money for our child to go to college when she is very young, but we don’t know if she will want to go to college once she finishes grade school.

Decide deliberately who you want to be, and begin taking steps right now to embody that person, shaping habits that prove to you that you are your desired identity.