Change Your Identity to Break Bad Habits: The Secret to Personal Transformation

It's all about your identity.

If you want to change what you're doing or the way your day goes, one really good way to do it is to change who you are. We can start with bad habits, for example. Let's say you want to quit a certain thing. Let's say you want to quit drinking. Instead of trying to change the behavior of drinking, change your identity. How do you do that? Well, you start to actually understand that, “I'm not a drinker.” So that if I offer you a drink, you say, no, I'm not a drinker. Or same thing with cigarettes or anything, any habit like that.

So how about non-addictive habits? What does identity have to do with that? Well, let’s say you want to change the behavior of when your workday is. Let's say you're really trying to get to bed earlier and you want to quit earlier and therefore you think, well, you know, I probably need to get up earlier. Change how you think about yourself, how you talk about yourself.

“I'm an early riser.”

That's a whole different come-from than “I get up early.”

Start to think about the new things you want in your life and then identify who is it that does those things. And then change your identity into that. It is a whole lot easier than trying to change your behavior without changing your identity.

It's all about identity.

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