Your identity isn't fixed

A lot of people think they are a certain way, and that's that. "That's just how I am." But when you look at what shaped that way of being, you realise it isn't quite like that.

Your identity was built by many things. The environment you grew up in, the people you spent time with, the things that happened to you, the traits you were born with and a lot of desires you copied from others without noticing.

Most of this wasn't chosen by you. You didn't choose your parents, your town or your temperament. But that doesn't mean your identity is closed.

Science shows that personality changes over a lifetime. Researchers in Edinburgh tracked down people who had been rated by their teachers at age 14, in 1947, and rated them again at 77. They found almost no link between the personality at one age and the other.

And there are studies showing that it's possible to change on purpose. But with one condition: only those who act change. In a 2019 study, accepting challenges to change wasn't enough. Only those who completed them changed.

Why does this matter? Because the way you see yourself shapes the way you think and act. If you see yourself as someone who can't, you'll act like someone who can't.

Every identity serves a purpose. Sometimes that purpose is to protect you from pain.

Imagine someone who is overweight. They may have a whole set of explanations: genetics, work, lack of time, the kids. Some of them may even be true. But together they serve one thing: feeling better about the situation without having to change it. The mind does this on its own. When what you do doesn't match who you'd like to be, it finds justifications to ease the discomfort. Psychology calls it cognitive dissonance.

This isn't a conscious choice. Nobody wakes up and decides to be a victim. But from the moment you see what's happening, it becomes a choice. You can keep the same story, or you can use the same situation for another purpose: to change.

And change doesn't start by convincing yourself you're someone else. It starts with what you do. Someone who trains three times a week for a few months starts to see themselves as someone who trains. The new identity comes from repeated actions, not the other way round.

Your environment helps. If you change the people you're with, what you consume and the places where you spend your time, you'll change. But moving to another city isn't enough if you take the same habits with you.

I've taken on several roles in my life. I've been a bodybuilder, a pianist, a writer, a coach to athletes, a business owner, a digital nomad. Each one served what I needed at that stage. When they stopped serving me, I changed them.

In yoga there is a similar idea. Experiences and repetition leave marks that create tendencies. What you call "the way you are" is, to a large extent, an accumulation of habits.

But yoga goes further and says you are none of these characters. Neither the old one nor the new one. That's for another text.