It is really fucking hard to change your habits and your actions while believing everything you currently believe about yourself. It’s more effective in the long run to shift your ideas about your identity first, and allow the actions that align with that identity to support this identity shift. To live “like” the person you want to be, you first have to recognize your capability to do so. If I want to complete a marathon, I have to become the type of person that prioritizes running. If I want to learn to swim, I have to be someone who is willing to put on a bathing suit and get in the water. I can’t keep thinking of myself as some ineffective, incompetent failure if I don’t want to feel like an ineffective, incompetent failure. I have to start thinking of myself as capable, and competent, and effective; and I really have to do my best to believe it.
The more I am able to align myself with that identity, the easier it is to show up and do the things other people who identify the same way do. It’s easier to think of these new behaviors as a lifestyle choice. Not a habit you’re trying to do more of. If I say, I’m trying to eat less meat, it is less convincing to myself than when I say, I’m no longer eating meat. Or even more so, if I can call myself a vegetarian. When I leaned fully into the vegetarian identity, it was easier for me to know what choices did and didn’t fit with that.
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