You’ll often hear people say that if you really want to get the best results for yourself you need to do more than just change your behaviours or even your beliefs. You need to start changing the core aspects that make up your identity.

For the moment we’ll leave aside questions of whether there is such a thing as an identity and whether or not it is made up of different aspects; Id, ego, conscious, sub-conscious etc. For our purposes ‘identity’ is all the ways in which you can finish the sentence ‘I am…’.

The first experience I had of the power of my identity was when I was 16 or 17. I had made some new friends that played in a band and for some reason I just knew that I was a great song-writer. I had never written any lyrics and had only ever played the xylophone in music class.

So I bought myself a guitar, set about teaching myself to play, and am still playing ten years later. Now whether or not I’m a good song-writer or guitar-player is subjective. But the point is that I did not and will not stop writing songs and practising the guitar until my outward experiences match those I believe to be that of a great song-writer and guitar-player. For me personally that is pride in my own work and abilities, recognition from other musicians, and people enjoying my music. I chose an identity and from that all kinds of beliefs and behaviours that were needed to get me to the end state started to flow.

Looking around I see a lot of people choosing identities for themselves, consciously or not. Unconsciously people often resort to certain stereotypes. For example if I asked you to think of a stock-market trader you’ll instantly recall a certain stereotype. You’ll have an idea of his personality, how he behaves, his interests and hobbies. Now of course everyone is an individual but stereo-types don’t come out of nowhere. Certain people are attracted to that job. Then it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle as young people that want to become traders, will start to dress, talk and act the way they think traders do. They take on the identity and the beliefs and behaviours follow.

Because I was really interested in making music I often spent time at gigs and around other musicians. The popular conception of musicians, at least those that make music like rock or hip-hop, is that alcohol and drugs are a normal part of their life-style. Now I’m not against alcohol and drugs but it’s funny to me how ingrained the idea is that drugs and alcohol fuel creativity. I don’t believe it’s at all necessary and think that the majority are just living up to some idea of what they think musicians and rock-stars ought to be.

Now that your aware of this maybe you can think about what kind of identity you’ve taken on. What beliefs and behaviours are attached to this identity. I’m talking about everything from whether or not this identity encourages you to jump out of bed in the morning, get drunk on a Friday night or keep your promises. All your beliefs and behaviours point to an identity.

So write down the phrase ‘I am…’ and finish the sentence in as many ways as you can. Then decide if the identity they describe is one that you’re happy with. Would you like to trade it, or just augment it somehow? Getting your identity right will allow all the right beliefs and behaviours to flow naturally.