Big Idea #1 From Me
If you want to change your life, changing your identity is often a good place to start.
But before you can understand how to change your identity, you need to understand 3 fundamental basics concerning identity.
First, you have multiple identities. A man can be a father, a son, a husband, an employer, a pastor, a spirit man and many more. The man possesses all these identities at the same time.
Second, your identity is not stable. Even though it appears to be stable, your perception of who you are, changes from time to time, based on the immediate context that you find yourself in. The same man that is an aggressive taskmaster as an employee at work becomes harmless, soft and emotional when playing with his newborn baby at home. It’s all in the context.
Thirdly, while identity is never stable because you have multiple identities at the same time, your desire to use your identity to make meaning of your life is always constant. This is why you would never act in a manner that is not consistent with your identity. If an action does not make sense to the identity that is on your mind at the moment, you would not follow through with it.
With that said, how can you change your identity to set yourself up for victory over sin and destructive habits?
The first step is to develop clarity about the new identity you desire to express constantly. For instance, as a believer, my identity is that I am born of the Spirit. As a result, I am a spirit too. What are my characteristics as one born of the Spirit? According to the Bible, it means that I am righteous, holy, and wise. Alternatively, you may decide that you want to be a serial, best-selling author. What are the characteristics of best-selling authors? Well, for one, they make time to write in the mornings and/or evenings every day!
Once you have clarity about the identity you wish you express in your life, you need to find a way to make that identity stay stable in your mind. The way this is done is through constant consciousness. And here is the part where a lot of us fall short. You cannot merely wish, woo, or command your consciousness of a particular identity to jump on you. The truth is that people are sensitive to what their immediate context implies for their identities. That is why stability in identity only comes from repeatedly experiencing contexts that overall feel the same over time. As a believer, this is referred to as ‘renewing of your mind’ where you consistently expose your mind to as many different contexts for the new identity you seek to manifest. For instance, being wise in my spiritual identity might mean resisting the devil in one context, while also meaning fleeing fornication in another context. The same thing is applicable in the example of the person who wants to be a best-selling author. By choosing to write every morning, you’re showing that you’re consistent and disciplined, which might also mean that you work out every evening in one context, while also meaning that you would not check your mails until 12 noon.
Finally, you need to have an interpretation and plan for the difficulties that you would inevitably encounter. Learn to reframe difficulties as important milestones you need to pass to reinforce your identity. For instance, as a believer, trials and temptations are bound to arise. However, when I rename these temptations or trials as pathways to growth, I am more likely going to keep my mind on the identity of being born of the spirit. Similarly, for the person that wants to write a best-selling book, a time would come when it would become a bit difficult to stay consistent and disciplined. The individual that interprets these difficulties as a necessary path to greatness would ride over the waves of challenges and would arrive at his expected destination in the long run.
When you operate from an identity paradigm, the difficulties you experience become the path you need to take to arrive at the better you that desire. The truth is that while your identity influences your actions, your actions also have an effect on your identity. When you act in a way that aligns with your desired identity, you reinforce that identity; and when you act in a way that does not align with your identity, you’re dismissing the importance of that identity you desire.
Big Idea #2 From Research
In their classic 1984 paper, Current Issues in Attribution Theory and Research, John Harvey and Gifford Weary reviewed the reasons why, as humans, we are often guilty of grossly overestimating the power that our personalities have on many aspects of our lives.
Yet, when you think about it, you’d realize that in your day-to-day activities, your environment is arguably at least as important as your personality.
Your environment influences the kind of options you have for food. For instance, yams do not grow in the United States, and as a consequence, they do not eat pounded yam. Similarly, apples do not grow in Nigeria, making it impossible to eat apple pies over there.
The environment also plays a key role in the type of clothes you will wear, which will, in turn, affect your appearance. Take a moment and ponder on this: No matter how fanatic an individual is as a Christian, she will still put on a shawl if she happens to be in the deserts of the Middle East. Failure to do so will make her vulnerable to the dusty winds of that region.
When you reduce the idea of what one eats or wears to the barest concept, you’d find them for what they really are.
They are decisions that you make without actively thinking.
Why? Because the environment you are situated in determines the range of your choices.
My point is simple: If the environment can influence our decisions in the form of the food we eat, or the clothes we wear, why do we fail to see its impact on other aspects of our decision making?
It’s because we are all guilty of committing the Fundamental Attribution Error.
According to researchers, the fundamental attribution error is the tendency to underestimate environmental factors and overestimate the role of personality in determining all forms of behavior – including quality decision making.
And you see the result in our societies today:
People identify as depressed individuals, while totally ignoring the fact that they might be in a depressing physical or social environment.
There are discontented individuals and families all over the world who are neck-deep in debt but fail to see how the prevalent culture of materialism and immediate gratification has made them vulnerable to buying unnecessary things.
Your personality may affect the quality of your decisions, but your environment is the real game-changer. It will make or break you.
Big Idea #3 From Bible
Romans 4:20-22 says, “He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; And being fully persuaded that, what He had promised, He was able also to perform. And therefore it was imputed unto him for righteousness”
The first thing we note is that Abraham did not waver at all concerning God’s promises for him. In his epistles to the early church, James explains that anyone who wavers is not walking in faith and as a result, such person cannot (that is, “is totally unable to”) receive anything from God.
Abraham refused to waver. Instead, he grew stronger as a result of his being empowered by faith. And how did Abraham get empowered by faith? He gave praise to God!!! Abraham arrived at a point where he was established and firmly rooted in his faith in God. He abounded and multiplied in that faith as a result of thanksgiving to God. Never underestimate the power of thanksgiving and praise, they go a long way in helping you release your faith in God.
Abraham was fully confident and assured that the same God who had promised him was also able and mighty enough to keep the Word that had been promised. In response, God declared Abraham to be a righteous man!!!
This is a very, very profound truth. If you can grasp it, this truth has the potential to change how you view God’s righteousness.
You see, it’s amazing how people can easily believe that God spoke the entire world into existence. In fact, we find it relatively easy to believe that God’s Word “became flesh and dwelt among us”.
Yet, when it comes to righteousness by faith, we find ourselves at our wit’s end.
All Abraham did was to believe God’s Word and God looked at Abraham and said, “YOU ARE A RIGHTEOUS MAN!!!”
Do you know what I consider to be the most amazing thing about this truth?
It is the promise itself!
According to the account of this story in Genesis, we realize that God’s promise to Abraham was a son. Not that Abraham would be saved or won’t go to hell!
And because Abraham believed with every fiber of his being, he was put in right standing with God as a man who had had righteousness ‘credited’ into his account.
If God could do this mightily for a man who believed God’s promise for a son, why do you still find it difficult to relate with the truth that God’s grace has saved you and you have received God’s righteousness by faith?
May the Lord grant you understanding in these things.
