Shape Your Identity to Reach Your Goals

Don’t focus on the outcome but the why

If you haven’t watched it I couldn’t recommend you more this Simon Sinek ted talk.

In this talk, he speaks about the importance for companies to focus on their why. True success never comes from what you are selling or how you are selling it. It ultimately comes from why you are selling it.

The same lesson can be applied to your life. Focusing on the what, the outcome is a recipe for failure. Not because you cannot achieve the outcome, but because it makes you focus on the wrong thing.

When you focus on the outcome it’s very hard to find little joy in the present effort. The continual improvement that you make every single day.

That’s why most people eventually give up on their goals. They try to lose weight and after a few sports sessions they don’t see much results, so they give up.

But what if, instead of focusing on the outcome, you started focusing on your identity? On your why.

The entire perspective changes. If you haven’t lost weight after a few sports sessions, that’s fine. You are an active person. That’s your identity. Identity then provokes behaviors. And the behavior of an active person will eventually result in the outcome desired.

That’s the irony of life. The less you focus on your goals, the more likely you are to achieve them. And that’s simply because your identity defines what you do when you face a hard choice.

Make It Easy

My secret when I have a hard decision to make? Make it easy. It doesn’t work for everything but most of the time it makes my life way easier.

The other I hesitated to go running. Simply because my legs were a tiny bit painful and it was slightly raining outside. But I anchored in my identity that I’m a runner. So the choice becomes very easy. If I think I won’t hurt myself, then I go running. No matter what. Simple.

You want to remove as much decision fatigue in your life as possible. The more automatic your choices are, the more strength you will have for decisions that require a lot of thought.

The opposite is true as well. Make bad habits and unproductive behavior difficult. If your video game console is unplugged and in a drawer in another room, you are less likely to play than when it’s just waiting for you to press a button.

If your phone is turned off and not in your reach it will also be far easier to not mindlessly check your social media accounts.

It’s all about resistance.

Increase the resistance for the behavior you don’t want to have and reduce it for the behaviors you want to have. It will make changing your identity simpler.

Don’t Listen to The Crowd

Going through an identity change is a hard process. It takes time and effort. One thing that you don’t need during this period is people dragging you down.

People are mostly opposed to change. They know you in one state and the first natural reaction they will have when you try to change is to oppose it.

Having those voices slowing you down can happen very quickly. So don’t listen to them. If someone has a negative attitude toward your process, just stop seeing them for a while.

Your true friends and close relatives will have the opposite approach. They will encourage you and even provide help if you ask them. They understand that you are trying to change for the better.

We are social animals and we let the judgment of people influence our decisions. But there are only a few people in your life that you should let have an impact on your life.

Everything else is noise.

Write Down Your Process

It’s easy to get lost when you are trying to form a new identity and build new habits.

Don’t let that happen. Write down your progress.

A few years ago I started coding. I wanted to be a programmer so I practiced every day. But my identity was in the process of changing. To help this change I wrote down every evening what I code and how long I worked on it.

What matters is that at the end of the month I could see that I spent a lot of time coding. I couldn’t see any change or progress in the day-to-day business but when taking a step back it was clear that there was some improvement.

I’m currently learning German and spending around an hour learning the language every day. I don’t feel like I’m better than yesterday. But when I look at my speech and my writing of 3–4 months ago, it’s night and day.

Falling in love with the process is very important. And it’s easier to do if you write down what you are doing every single day toward this identity change.

Final Thoughts

Wanting to change your identity is a great start. It’s more effective to be identity-oriented than goal-oriented.

This will still be a hard process though.

You won’t have time to listen to what others think of you. You can only work on the tiny choices you make every day.

Your identity builds your choices, as well as your choices, build your identity.

There is no better definition of self-improvement than this. It’s about focusing on what you can control and silencing out everything else.

If you do this for long enough, you’ll eventually meet your goals.

It’s a matter of consistency and effort.