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.