Building a Life Aligned to Your Values Part 3

The deepest level of change is identity change, and it goes far beyond our behaviors. If systems change is the engine that moves us forward, identity change is the fuel that makes the engine run. Subconsciously, your brain has an idea of what kind of person you are, and over time it creates habits to support that idea of identity. It does this based on evidence, it keeps track of what you’ve done so far and makes assumptions based on that. For example, if you are a smoker your brain knows this and has a hard time NOT smoking. If you have never smoked, then your brain has no context for you being a smoker, so you’re not likely to suddenly crave a cigarette.

If you are trying to create lasting change in your life, but you are simply forcing yourself to consistently do an action that you don’t identify with, you are doomed to fail. You may be able to stick with it for a short while, but eventually your brain will say “enough is enough, we are not that kind of person, and we won’t spend the effort on this anymore”. This is especially true for neurodivergent brains that don’t have as much effort to give in the first place. The number one most important factor of whether or not you will be able to stick with a change is whether you identify with that change. It’s not what you do that needs to change, it’s who you are.

I used to be a smoker, and I would joke that “quitting must be easy, because I’ve done it 100 times.” I would always end up starting again, because the problem was I still saw myself as a smoker. It felt wrong not to smoke, because I had given my brain so much evidence to identify with. It felt like not smoking was at odds with who I was. I really did try to quit but was not successful until I tried a different approach. I got so fed up with the money it cost me and the way it made me feel that I decided I was not a smoker anymore. Not that I was going to quit smoking, that I was not going to be a smoker anymore. This identity shift, reinforced by using systems to give my brain new evidence to support it, is what ultimately enabled me to make the change stick. I have been a non-smoker for about 5 years now, and I will never smoke again because it’s not who I am anymore.

That’s what I mean by identity change, not to change your name, but to change how you see yourself and the kind of person you identify with. What you want to do in life is one thing, but the real question you need to start asking is what kind of person do I want to be? If you want to get in shape, first think about the kind of person who is in shape. What systems would they have in place? What kinds of actions would they take? What kind of choices would they make? What kind of person are they? If someone is in shape, they would make healthy choices in what they eat, how they treat their bodies, and what they prioritize their time for. Suffice to say that this kind of person would be considered healthy, so instead of simply trying to force these habits onto yourself, you would do better to set a goal of identifying more as a healthy person. How can you get your brain to identify more as a healthy person? The same way it got to where you are now: evidence. Once we determine what results we want, and the type of identity that would support lasting change to get the results, then we implement systems to give our brains new evidence, slowly but surely, to get us where we want to go.

It’s important to understand how change works before we can start actually making the changes. Next week, we will dive in to the heart of this section and determine what our true values are so we can frame our goals properly.

Thanks as always for reading,

Aaron Frank